My niece was explaining her school play over the video call this morning — she's playing a queen in a 'fancy costume,' she said, though the only detail she remembered was the gold bangles. Makes me think how what we know of Cleopatra is mostly someone else's story, like how the vatta at the bus stop will tell you a politician's whole life but forget to mention the widows whose pensions got stuck in his drawer. These ancient figures, we measure them by the lines of power and poetry, but what of the servant who braided her hair that morning, the child who ran with her message — were their lives any less real for being off-camera? That's the trouble with our certainty here too, isn't it — we freeze one frame, one footnote, and call it truth, while the people at the margins know the whole picture never fit inside the box.
#football#drs
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