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You were born in 1500 BC Egypt. Fortunately for you, you're born a daughter to the Pharaoh. Yeah, that same pharaoh. The most powerful man alive, the living God, the son of Raw, the kind poets are supposed to write about.
A narrated history-style video following a royal Egyptian princess's life, her forced marriage to her brother the Pharaoh, and the tragedies that follow, drawing on incest-based royal lineage practice
Key Takeaways
- Royal sibling marriage in ancient Egypt was framed as a way to preserve divine bloodline purity.
- The video portrays the personal cost of this practice through the protagonist's health struggles and family tragedies.
- Palace power structures, including the status of the great wife, shaped women's lives significantly.
- The dramatized storytelling mixes historical framing with fictionalized emotional detail.
What the video covers
- The narrator follows an Egyptian princess born to the Pharaoh, beginning with her fragile childhood and frequent illnesses.
- Her younger brother is favored as the 'son of God' and grows stronger, highlighting the sibling gap in health and vigor.
- Her mother, the great wife, teaches her palace management and eventually reveals the royal bloodline must stay pure through sibling marriage.
- Her father dies when she is 22, and her brother is crowned Pharaoh; she is formally married to him three months later as his great wife.
- She experiences the emotional strangeness of the marriage, navigating palace roles while her brother takes other wives.
- The video describes her pregnancies, including a stillbirth and the later death of her young son from fever.
- Her own death is portrayed, with the brother ordering the burial of her stillborn daughter and son beside her.
- The narrative blends historical context about royal sibling marriage with dramatized first-person storytelling.
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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Yeah, him. Normally, celebrations and jubilations should announce your birth, but the mood right now is more fitting for a funeral. This is especially so for your mother as she has a look of dread on her face. The truth is you aren't
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technically her first child. You are just her only surviving one. You've been unresponsive for 3 minutes. Your mother has done this math before. She knows exactly how these nights tend to go. So when your own cry finally comes, late
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thin, more complaint than declaration. Nobody in the room celebrates. They just exhale. Still, your mother can't help but show a faint smile as she says to you silently, "Welcome to the family of God, little one." The first 3 years of your life are spent
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with your mother in her chambers. And for as long as you can remember, the royal physician visits you almost every day. Sometimes he gives you some foultasting herbal drink. Other times, he burns incense and gives you an amulet. And every time he does, your
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mother prays to Ra that you grow to be healthy. A year passes and your brother arrives.
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The day he's born, your father comes into your mother's chambers for the first time in years. As little as this gesture is, it makes you understand just how important your baby brother is. But you're not jealous. Instead, you're
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thrilled. Staying in your mother's chamber all day was starting to get [music] boring. With your brother here, now at least you've got a companion. You just turned five when you finally start to walk. Your brother can too. And
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unlike you, he could by age two. You ask your mother why you took too long. She tells you that you weren't slow, that your brother was just too fast because he's the son of God.
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You can't argue with that. But that's not the only good news. As that year, you're both finally allowed out of your mother's chambers. Your first visit to the courtyard makes you realize that your fragile condition isn't normal.
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Even your brother, whom you've always treated as a demigod, is nowhere strong enough compared to your half siblings.
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This is because you see them running till their breath fails, falling on purpose just to see if it hurts, then getting straight back up like it's nothing. Your brother even tries to race with some boys his age. The result gives
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you the shock of your life. You watch him fail to keep up as he comes up dead last. Watching his face, you realize he has come to the same conclusion as you.
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He used to feel good for being a little better off than you. But a little better isn't the same as keeping up. Because when the other boys race across the courtyard again, he doesn't even try. He already knows how it'll end for him.
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Years pass and the gap between you, your brother, and the rest of the family widens. Your half siblings shoot up taller every season, while you and your brother measure your own growth in smaller units, such as whether you made
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it through last month without a fever, or whether your legs made it through a full procession without your knees buckling.
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Somewhere in there, you notice something else. Something about your mother. Guests bow lower to her than they do to other wives. Priests address her first, always. When she enters a room, servants rearrange themselves around her like she's the center of gravity, not just
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another woman in the palace with children. So, you ask a nurse about it, half expecting no real answer. Surprisingly, [laughter] she tells you that your mother is the great wife. She explains that among the pharaoh's multiple wives and concubines, one woman reigns above
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the others. just below only the pharaoh himself. You never knew that your mother, who stayed awake next to you during a fever episode and told you stories of your ancestors, was that important.
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Years pass as you turn 12. It's then the lessons start, not palace lessons from tutors about scrolls and posture drills.
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These are different, private, just you and your mother in rooms your half siblings will never get invited to. She teaches you about the palace dynamics and how to manage inventories.
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At first, you don't ask why. You just show up because that's what's expected. Then one day, you wake up feeling wrong.
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The familiar kind of wrong that followed you your whole life. So, you tell your mother that you don't want to do the lessons today. You expect her to agree with you. After all, she has always doted on you. But this time she refuses,
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saying your weakness shouldn't be an excuse to be lazy. Annoyed at not getting your way, you ask for the first time out loud. Why do I even have to learn all of these things?
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She looks at you a long moment before she says, "It's because you'll marry your brother and become his great wife." Immediately, you're stunned as you ask why. It's then she tells you something you would have never guessed in a
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million years. She explains that the royal family blood contains divine powers and the purer the blood, the more prosperous Egypt will be. She tells you that the only way to keep the blood as pure as possible is making sure it never
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gets contaminated by the blood of outsiders. Unfortunately, it was messed up a few generations back. But she mentions that your grandfather took it upon himself to return the royal blood to its divine state. So, he married his sister, your grandmother. It's then that
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she reveals that she and your father are also siblings as they've also worked to make the royal lineage pure again. And to keep it pure, you and your brother will continue the trend. You take it the way you take everything, she tells you.
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as law, not something to feel a certain way about, just something that is. From that day on, you take your lesson seriously as you now take it as your duty to the royal lineage. You also watch your brother closely. Although
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he's younger than you, he doesn't look it. To a stranger, you look like the younger sibling. Still, all that is relative. After all, you are smaller than a normal 12-year-old. As the years go by, you notice his behavior around
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you has changed. Previously, he used to treat you like a big sister. Now, he acts like he's trying to impress you.
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Immediately, you understand that the future marriage arrangement for both of you must have been revealed to him.
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You've just turned 22 when your father dies. You expect the news to hit harder than it does. The truth is, your father was old, older than most men get to be from what you've heard. And you were never particularly close to him. A
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handful of formal audiences a year, a few rehearsed blessings, nothing that ever felt like closeness. So losing him feels less like losing a father and more like hearing that some old important building finally gave out.
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A day after his funeral, your brother is crowned. You watch from the crowd as the crook and flail are placed in his hands and something tightens in your chest.
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It's not exactly pride. It's closer to anxiety. This is because he's Pharaoh now and you already know what comes next for you.
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Although you both have been used to the idea for years, your mother made sure of that. An idea of an arrangement is still different from its realization.
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Still, you straighten your back the way you've been trained to and vow to do your duty to Egypt. So, you watch your brother become a god without letting your own face show anything at all. 3 months later, it's your turn as you
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formally marry your brother. And by the end of the day, you're not just his wife, you're his great wife. Exactly what your mother prepared you for. But what she never prepared you for is being your brother's wife. The night of your
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wedding is awkward to say the least. During the procession to his chambers, you can't help but see him as your little brother. And even when you're alone together, it's the same. But every time your instinct protests against this
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unnatural arrangement, your mother's voice about restoring your divine lineage assures you. Still, settling into the role of great wife doesn't take you long. Your mother has retreated from public view as she has retired to a private chamber. Now you only have to
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show up exactly the way your lessons trained you to. You start your day at dawn with priests murmuring over you before you're even fully awake. Your body protests some mornings more than others. Still, the ritual doesn't wait for you to feel up to it. It never has.
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By midm morning, you're standing beside your brother at court while nobles line up asking him for things. Land, grain aotments, marriages for their sons.
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No one addresses you directly. This is not because they believe you to be useless, but because your duties lie somewhere else. You oversee the domestic needs of the palace. Textile stores, temple offerings, and even provisioning for the palace all run through you. Now,
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you are the one who catches a grain shortfall before it becomes a crisis. The one who budgets for palace events and festivals. Nobody thanks you for it.
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Nobody's supposed to. After all, it's your duty to Egypt. But inventories aren't the only thing you oversee in the palace. Over the years, your brother has taken other wives. This is not out of want. It's more of arithmetic.
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A noble family here, a foreign alliance there. Women from each one arrive with their own retinue, their own claim to a sliver of importance in a palace already crowded with people competing for too little of it. So you make it clear early
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and without raising your voice exactly where each of them stands, who sits where, who speaks first, who waits. And it doesn't take long for the meaning to land. You earned this title by surviving childhood. But to keep it, you'll have
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to treat them as your mother taught you, without apology or mercy. It doesn't take them long to fulfill their duties.
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As one after another, healthy and loud children start to populate the palace. You make sure each birth is celebrated properly. Each one serving as a public reminder of the one thing you're supposed to be doing and haven't. You're
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28 when everything starts to change. One morning, you wake up feeling weaker than usual. You even get nauseous as you vomit twice before the morning's court meeting. Immediately, this alerts your attendance as the palace physician is summoned. When he arrives, he smiles as
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he greets you. He isn't a stranger to you as he has been around since you were a kid. He also knows about your medical history as he apprenticed under the physician who used to give you amulets.
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So, you both believe this is a routine fever. But as he runs his diagnosis, his face gives it away before he says a single word.
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You're pregnant. The news reaches your brother in moments. When he visits your chambers later that night, a bit of the divinity you've always believed he has cracks.
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For a moment, he looks like a man worried for his sister, wife, and unborn child. Then, almost immediately, he goes back to his god-like persona. But something in him changes as the next day, he starts to send you gifts.
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jewelry oils [laughter] a bolt of linen so fine it makes your wedding dress look coarse by comparison.
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It gets so obvious as during a public audience he says it out loud in front of everyone that the gods are with Egypt again that Mahat is restored. You let yourself believe it too because for the first time since you took this title you
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can be yourself. You find yourself actually being warm, easier with the other wives, more patient with the staff who fumble small things that would normally get them dismissed from the palace. Happiness for some reason turns out to be contagious
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as it seems the pharaoh has infected you with it. And by the time your pregnancy crosses the fourth month, you are already imagining what your child will look like, whether it'll have your mother's eyes or your brother's stubbornness.
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Eventually, your term passes and you go into labor. In the labor room, there are midwives, physicians, and a priest just in case. The pharaoh, your brother, hopes to avoid all complications, even the spiritual. So, while you scream from
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the pain, incense and chance to raw fill the background. Soon, it's over as you feel a weight leave your body. You expect to hear congratulations, but the room goes quiet in a way you don't quite understand. It's at that
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moment you realize that there's no crying. That's when you look around and see a still pink figure being attended to by the midwives.
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Immediately, you understand what's going on. Your mother has mentioned how you didn't cry immediately after you came out of the womb. So, you pray it's something similar. But 10 minutes later, there's still no cry.
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You look around and see looks of pity directed at you. You don't want to believe that the worst has happened as you beckon for your child. At first, the midwives hesitate, but your threats of eternal damnation for them and their
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families do the trick. [crying] Finally, you hold your daughter. Yes, it's a she. She's perfectly formed, but also perfectly still.
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around you. Nobody says anything out loud. You don't talk either. You just hold her a little longer than anyone's comfortable with and let the silence be the only thing anyone [music] needs to understand.
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Minutes later, she's taken away from you to be mummified or something. To be honest, you're too heartbroken to care.
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But from that day on, something in you dims as you go back to your default mode of putting people in their place because that's the only version of you that seems to be able to deal with the pain you have to hide. The
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pain is especially harder to contain because you lost your mother a year before you got pregnant. You wonder if this was the exact pain she felt when your elder siblings passed away. Still, duty doesn't care what you're feeling as
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you keep going the way you always have. However, you do things differently this time. You hand off pieces of your usual work, like the grain counts and festival budgets to attendance you trust and pour the hours you free up into the temple
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instead. You take fertility rights and offerings as you take them more seriously than ever. You even start to say your prayers slower than you used to, as if you believe the gods are hard of hearing.
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But it seems they never hear your prayers as you suffered two miscarriages in the next 3 years.
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Then 2 years after your last miscarriage, you get pregnant again. You don't know if your prayers finally got to the gods, but you don't complain. And just like before, word reaches your brother before you've even told him yourself.
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This time his response isn't gifts. It's an order. The order says you are not to do anything. No court, no temple duties beyond the ones performed for you, not by you. And for a woman who's built her whole identity on being useful, being
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told to simply exist is its own strange punishment. You obey anyway. After all, you also want this time to end in celebration.
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And after 9 months of doing absolutely nothing, your Labor Day arrives. This time it ends in a cry. And it's not yours. It's from your son.
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Immediately, jubilations erupt all over the kingdom as your brother announces a celebration. He even boasts that your son would lead Egypt to a new era. You don't say anything to that. You're just happy to have a son. A daughter would
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have been welcome, but her role wouldn't surpass yours, which is being a wife to her brother. And for some reason, your instinct tells you that this was your last chance for a child. A year passes and your son is one now. You've noticed
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that he grows slower than other children his age. He also tires faster. The first time you inquired about the reason from the physician, he mentioned that your son has a weak heart and that he should never be physically taxed. You already
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know what he's not quite saying. Still, you aren't worried. You spent your whole life being the slower one who tires fastest, and you're still here. So, if he's going to be like you, at least he won't be alone, as you'll be with him
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every step of the way. But fate has other plans. as a month after he turns three, he gets a fever.
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At first, you tell yourself it's nothing, that children get fevers. You've had dozens yourself and lived to tell everyone.
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But this one doesn't behave like the others, as even the physician is perplexed. You watch as the same rituals from your own childhood get performed on your son, only to fail. And every night, the fever persists. You have his maids hold cool
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cloths to his forehead as you count his breaths without meaning to. Then on the fifth night, the fever breaks. He opens his eyes and complains of hunger for the first time. Immediately, you order his favorite foods to be prepared. When he's
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done eating, you rock him back to sleep as you believe the worst is over.
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It isn't because by morning, you hear screams from his room. When you get there, you notice that your son is unnaturally still.
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Nobody needs to tell you as for an instant, he looks just like how his stillborn sister looked. Your son is dead.
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From that day on, life becomes a blur. Days go by without you noticing their passing. Meals arrive and leave untouched.
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Soon, the grief and forced hunger strikes start to have an effect on your body as you [music] grow weaker by the week. It doesn't take long before you also fall ill. [sighs] Soon, incense and amulets fill your chambers. Bitter drinks you barely
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swallow are forced down your throat by physicians trying to keep you alive. But it's all in vain as you die believing you failed at the one job Egypt [music] actually needed from you.
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You never gave it a pure-blooded error. They bury you a day later. What you don't know is that your brother orders that the mummified remains of your stillborn daughter and your three-year-old son are placed in the tomb beside you. Maybe that's his way of
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keeping you and your children together forever. Only he knows. But what you both never learn is that the royal family's blind pursuit of purity is what doomed your children to an early grave.
Topics:ancient Egyptpharaohroyal historysibling marriagegreat wifeEgyptian dynastyhistorical storytellingroyal bloodlinepalace lifenarrative history
