European Royalty discussion

Please discuss The Fifth Scroll and The Sixth Scroll (chapters 45 - 63) here.

Anyone else annoyed with Cleopatra (not the book, the character)? She kind of has a holier-than-thou attitude, like when she's judging Antony's upcoming invasion of Parthia (sp?) and is so worried about his plans. It's like she soaked up all of Caesar's wisdom when she slept with him. That might be part of the reason it's been hard for me to finish this book - I don't think I really like the main character.

I didn't really see it as her feeling like she'd inherited all of Caesar's wisdom but rather that she was born with the intelligence and raised with the education to have this kind of wisdom herself. But I did feel like "if she was so wise, why did she ultimately fail?" at times during the book.

I also thought her lack of faith in Antony sometimes was foretelling of the fact that he was not competent enough to pull off their ultimate goal. And that somewhere, deep down, Cleopatra knew that.