Title: Days in Macedonian Lives
Author: Qaddafi the Ripper
Summary: Philip falls head over heels for Eurydike/Kleopatra.
Notes: This was originally supposed to be a mock of soap operas. Then I realized that since I've never been able to watch more than five minutes of a soap opera without developing a nervous twitch, that that maybe wasn't such a good idea. So now it's just a silly story with a stolen-from-soap-opera title and occasionally feels like a (sarcastic) soap opera. Pretend that made sense.
Episode 1: A Hot Chick
To the barbarian King of Macedon, Philip, from the preeminent demagogue of Athens, Demosthenes.
As always, I find your stratagems inconceivable. How do you ever delude yourself into believing that there is merit in them? I scoff at the very notion that these pretensions could ever yield success! Yet, if you truly convince yourself that you could ever overwhelm the chronologically, morally, and intellectually superior Athens, then I welcome to try your mettle against us! You will discover that we are far superior to yourself, and your battalions will lie decimated upon our walls.
Philip scratched his head over the letter. No matter how many times he read it, it still didn't make any sense. What was a stratagem? Or a pretension? And what, by Zeus, did chronologically superior mean? He looked up to his two best friends. "Do either of you know what he's saying?" he asked hopefully.
Parmenion took the letter. He read it over once, muttering softly under his breath. When he came to the end, he scowled and turned the letter upside down to see if it would make more sense from that angle. "I think he doesn't like you," he finally concluded.
Philip rolled his eyes. "I already know he doesn't like me. Remember, he called me a T-rex."
"You mean tyrant," Antipater corrected him. Ever since Demosthenes had started writing Philip, he'd taken to carrying a dictionary with him. "It means a bad king."
"I know what tyrant means!" Philip snapped. "And Demosthenes couldn't possibly be sending me mail just to say he doesn't like me!"
Antipater took the letter from Parmenion and read it for himself. He consulted his dictionary a few times. After a while, he hazarded a guess. "I think he's challenging you. He doesn't think you could ever defeat Athens."
Philip looked horrified. "Why would I ever want to conquer Athens?" he demanded. "I love Athens! There are four pictures of it in my bedroom. It's where I've always wanted to go for vacation."
Parmenion shrugged. "Well, Demosthenes seems to think you want to conquer it. But I think he also thinks you sleep with chickens so you should probably ignore him."
"Sleep with chickens," Philip muttered darkly. "They're much too small to be satisfying..." he trailed off when he noticed his friends giving him weird looks. He coughed pointedly. "So we'll just ignore him, okay? I got enough problems around here without dealing with that jackass anyway!"
Enough problems he certainly had. Foremost among them would be Eurydike. Well, okay, so Olympias was probably the biggest problem, but he'd more or less gotten used to her and her strangeness by now. But Eurydike was an entirely new problem. He'd met her only a few days ago when she brought her uncle Attalos his lunch. He drifted off into a memory of their very moving meeting.
He'd looked over just in time to see her smile brightly at her uncle. Naturally, his eyes, at speeds unknown to lesser men, scoped her out. She had a cute face, long hair, pretty legs, and great boobs. He knew right then and there that he simply had to have her.
"And who's this fetching young lady?" he asked agreeably, giving his best smile and striking a manly pose. He knew standing like this showed off his legs to the best advantage.
"This is my dear, sweet niece Kleopatra," Attalos answered promptly. He swung an arm around the girl's shoulder and beamed. "Her dear parents passed away some years ago. Ever since then she's been very precious to both me and the missus."
"How wonderful of you to take her in!" Philip complimented. "But the name Kleopatra doesn't do her justice. I think Eurydike would be better." He gave the girl a deep and probing look that few women (or boys) could resisted. Why, just two nights ago he'd used the same look on the baker's wife, who had readily succumbed to it. And boy was he glad she had; that woman could do things with tongue he hadn't ever believed possible!
Attalos frowned. "Eurydike? But that's a royal name," he said. If Philip had been concentrating less on the niece, he'd have noticed the distinct gleam of ambition in the uncle's eye.
"Indeed, a royal name, as befits a girl of royal beauty. I want to have sex... I mean, I want to marry her." Nice recovery, he thought. Mustn't let Attalos think I just want his hot niece for sex. Even if it's true.
The girl - already in his mind he called her Eurydike, not Kleopatra - gasped and covered her mouth with one pretty hand. He was confident she'd be agreeable. Most women simply melted when they caught the king's attention, and he didn't see why she should be any different. But Eurydike turned a fetching shade of red and lowered her eyes. "Surely not, sire," she murmured, and he thought her voice might be even prettier than her face. "I'm not worthy of being your wife."
"And it's also past your bedtime," Attalos added quickly, even though it was only noontime. "I'll need to be getting this sweet thing home and off to bed!" He laughed loudly and hurriedly steered her out, holding her firmly by the elbow.
Philip had been horribly disappointed. Well, maybe she'd just been too shocked to say yes. Which she would say sooner or later, he was confident of that. Eventually he would get her in bed ...er, as his wife.
Unfortunately, sooner of later he'd have to tell Olympias about her too, as he was reminded forcibly when her loud voice sounded from outside his office, pulling him back to the present. She sounded ready to commit murder, or, worse, castration. He looked to his best friends in a wordless plea for help.
"Uh, we'll just be leaving now," Parmenion said. The general knew just when to beat a strategic retreat. "I, um, need to get back to writing my military critique of the Trojan War." Philip glared at him (Parmenion used that excuse way too often, and if he really was writing such a critique, then Philip wanted to read it), but he was already heading out the door, Antipater at his heels, which didn't help since Antipater wolf-whistled Olympias as he passed her.
Philip groaned and wondered if Antipater annoyed Olympias on purpose. Not that annoying her was a difficult thing to do or anything.
His wife stormed into the room before he could contemplate the disloyalty of his friends any further. "What's this I hear about you getting a new girlfriend?" she demanded sharply.
"Hello, dear," he said, trying to be nice. "Just because I was chatting with another woman doesn't mean I want to have sex with her."
Her eyes narrowed at him dangerously. "It always has before," she countered. "And I'm told you offered to marry her."
"It's nothing against you, dearest," he hastened to assure her. "I might like her, but you will always be first in my heart." He smiled winningly. "You are, after all, the mother of my heir, and nothing could ever displace you."
"Bullshit. You say things like that, but you still treat us women like we're nothing more than chattel to bear your sons! We women are more than that! Why, if not for women, men wouldn't be alive at all! And this is how you repay us? Mark my words, we women won't always lie down and let you men do whatever you want! We'll join the work force one day, get our own paychecks, decide for ourselves whether or not we want children, fight in war, and even have more than one husband!" She pulled a pamphlet out of her pocket and read from it. "Martha Crick from Corinth, for example, sold bread for a whole year while her husband was in a coma, and their business actually increased by 120 percent thanks to her! Furthermore..."
Philip stopped listening. Things always went downhill when Olympias got out her notes and started ranting about her so-called feminist movement. It was all nonsense of course, but he had to pretend to listen otherwise she'd never shut up. He decided to daydream about Eurydike's body to pass the time.
Maybe, he thought, Eurydike was an old-fashioned sort of girl (and no wonder if she was, with an uncle like Attalos). Maybe she wanted to be wooed a bit before he started talking about sex ...er, marriage. Well, he could do that. He'd invite her out to a nice restaurant and they'd get to know each other better. He could even bring her flowers and chocolate. After all that, surely she'd be more inclined to the idea of sleeping with ...er, marrying him.
Yes, marriage. Mustn't forget that. He wondered if he should already have a ring with him on their first date as Olympias continued on about some nonsense she called contraceptives and planned parenthood.
* * * * *
"Uncle Attalos, whatever is the matter?" Kleopatra asked in a worried tone. Attalos had finally carted back to his house in Pella (which, while still grand, wasn't as massive as his ancestral estates).
Attalos turned a firm but approving gaze on his niece. "That was a very wise thing you said to the king," he told her. She stared blankly, and he added, "The bit about how you couldn't marry him. Now he'll want to marry you even more!" He rubbed his hands together gleefully.
Kleopatra was aghast. "But I really couldn't marry the king," she protested weakly.
"Of course you could," Attalos said breezily, but with an undertone that clearly said he'd hear no more objections. "But you won't just be his wife, you'll be his queen!"
"Hasn't he already got a queen?" Kleopatra ventured timidly.
"What, that harpy Olympias? Pay no mind to her. She's a foreigner and a witch, and therefore evil. Macedon deserves a sweet, native woman like you for queen. Someone who has good moral values and no patience for all this liberal nonsense going around these days. You would be far better a queen Kleo-- no, Eurydike," he corrected himself smugly. "It's time our conservative politics, with family values as a backbone, takes control of this great country! Which is why you're going to let Philip court you until he's willing not just to marry you, but to make you his queen. And whatever you do, don't have sex with him until after the wedding!"
Kleopatra tried not to sigh. She rather liked her normal name and was sure she'd never get used to it if people started calling her something else. But she also knew that she should always listen to her uncle, who had always been good to her. Besides, it might be nice to be the queen. "I wouldn't sleep with the king," she assured him quietly but with determination. "I know never to have sex until I'm married. Sex is a dirty, filthy thing expect with a husband."
Attalos beamed proudly. He knew he'd raised the girl right. "Now," he began giving her specific instructions, "when he asks you out, you must keep your eyes lowered modestly. You must appear interested in everything he says and never contradict him." His voice droned on and Kleopatra, soon to be known only as Eurydike, bobbed her head up and down constantly.
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