TRIBE

My family have all been victimized by crazed midnight phone calls in which I recite speeches by Cicero and restructure a book they haven’t yet read. Once again, I’m wildly lucky, both in the people I’m related to and in the people I married into. Huge love and gratitude to Adriane Headley, Mark Headley and Meghan Koch, Molly Headley and Idir Benkaci, the Lumpkin family, the Moulton family, and the Headley family, my son, Joshua Schenkkan, and my daughter, Sarah Schenkkan (Guys, you’re upgraded. You’re my stepkids, yeah, but you’re my family, and I claim you), the Schenkkan/Rothgeb family. And the chorus of shades: my grandparents R. Dwayne and Marguerite Moulton, and my dad, Mark Bryan Headley. I miss you. I wish you could each have a copy of this book.

Gratitude as well to my two house-leopards. They don’t care if they are thanked, but I wrote this book with their particular cat assistance, and the lions and tigers are based on them.

Finally, most important, gratitude and adoration to Robert Schenkkan, my favorite person in the universe, my beloved, my dearest one. You read this book at least seven times, lent me your bookshelves, picked me up when I was yowling, fed me dinner, poured me bourbon, kissed me, cheered me on, discussed and discussed, gave me your whole stunning heart, and every day made me so proud to be yours. People ask me all the time how I manage to be married to another writer, and the answer is that the other writer is you. You are so brilliant, so giving, and so the perfect man for me. This book, with all its magic, monsters, treasures, and eternal love affairs, is dedicated to you for a damn good reason, just as I am. Te teneo.

MARIA DAHVANA HEADLEY (June 21, 1977 Estacada, Oregon). She is an American novelist, memoirist, and playwright.

She is a MacDowell Colony Fellow whose writing has appeared in The New York Times, Elle, The Washington Post, and other publications. She is the author of the memoir The Year of Yes (2007), which has been translated into nine languages. She lives in Seattle.

She is best known for the alternate history/fantasy novel, Queen of Kings, published in 2011. Her short story Give Her Honey When You Hear Her Scream was a 2012 Nebula Award nominee, in the short story category, and originally published in Lightspeed Magazine in July 2012.

Learn more at www.mariadahvanaheadley.com or www.cleopatraqueenofkings.com.

Notes

^[1] Note from the digital editor: Along all the novel, the author designates Augustus as emperor and that is correct and not true at the same time. In that time of Roman History emperor or better imperator was an honorific military title given by the legions to their triumphant generals. Mark Antony and Aggripa were also imperators in that context. It was later in History that the term began to designate the governor of the Roman Empire and only him. At Augustus’s time, his real title was Princeps (prince), designating him primus inter pares, as first between equals or the first citizen of the Republic, because in that time he still has the pretense that the antique Roman Republic was still working. But never in that time someone would have refered to Augustus as emperor meaning something similar to governor or king, so the term is correct referring to Augustus, but it had not the meaning the author gives it.<<