Cleopatra: The Girl Who Would Be King (Heroes in the Ancient World, #1) by Jackie French

Title: Cleopatra: The Girl Who Would Be King (Heroes in the Ancient World, #1)

Author: Jackie French

Genre: Historical Fiction

Publisher: HarperCollins Australia

Published: 26^th May 2026

Format: Paperback

Pages: 279

Price: $16.99

Synopsis: Renowned author and historian Jackie French takes us back in time to Greece and Rome and explores young heroes in ancient myths and legends whose stories will now be told.

Forget what you know about Cleopatra, the Egyptian queen with a fantastic hairstyle. That’s only part of the story. Before she was a ruler, Cleopatra was a girl with a fierce ambition: to become pharaoh.

When twelve-year-old Cleopatra and her father, Pharaoh Ptolemy XII, flee to ancient Rome in 59 BCE after Cleopatra’s sister seizes the throne, they are in serious trouble. It’s up to Cleopatra to raise enough gold to hire an army, gain the support of powerful allies, and take back her country’s land.

Three years later she had become the most famous pharaoh in history.

This is the story of how that year in ancient Rome might have changed Cleopatra’s life, with daring escapes, crocodiles, pirates, shipwreck and encountering the intrepid Captain Fileas and Myra, the slave determined to be free.

From one of Australia’s best-loved authors comes the first title in an exciting new series that explores the Ancient World.

~*~

Cleopatra VII was the last ruler of Egypt before it was annexed as Rome. She was known as a beautiful woman, the lover of Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. But what happened before she became the last pharaoh before Egypt became part of the Roman Empire? What was her life like before she became pharaoh?

This is what the first book in Jackie French’s new series does. Part fact, but a ficitonalised account of what happened around 59 BCE, Jackie’s new book is about Cleopatra and her father, Ptolemy escaping from Egypt after Cleopatra’s sister ousts them and seizes the throne. Cleopatra and her father head to Rome to get help from a powerful ally to get their throne back. But whilst there, they’re subject to Pompey and the rules of Rome. Cleopatra is determined to get her throne back from her sister, Berenice.

She summons all her courage and bravery to do so, and the story is seen through her eyes, a reimagining of what might have happened, as there are gaps in what we know from the record. It captures a sense of what it must have been like to be in exile, to be a co-regent with your father, and to want to find a way to help. But as a twelve-year-old girl in the ancient world, you didn’t yield as much power as you hoped, depending on where you were based on this book. Cleopatra is constantly comparing how women’s roles worked in Rome and Egypt, pointing out where women and slaves in Egypt had it better.

This story is told in first person through Cleopatra’s reimagined perspective. It is shaped by what we know and what Jackie French has found out, pieced together and had to reimagine to make the story work. She’s also created characters like Captain Fileas and Myra that help move the story along and show the differences between ancient cultures and countries and how everyone operated in different ways, depending on your class, whether you were a slave or whether you were a pirate. These two fictional characters were a great contrast to Cleopatra to highlight the different ways they understood life and how it worked.

Jackie acknowledges in her notes that this is a what-if kind of story, or a reimagining which I think helps position this in a place that isn’t quite fiction but isn’t quite reality. It’s the ancient world too, so the records of what happened could have been lost, as so many were in the fires that destroyed so much, it makes you wonder what we have lost and how many gaps could have been filled in.  And that I think is what makes this story work, because Jackie has had to reimagine it, and explains this to the reader, we’re prepared to understand the balance of reality and fiction.

I did my own research, and not everything mentions the events of this book, which is what makes this possible. Just because it isn’t there doesn’t mean it never happened. Cleopatra has an interesting story beyond the myths of her beauty that so many sources are about, and that so many iterations rely on. So it was pretty cool to see her reimagined as a child who didn’t feel that she fitted into her body. Everything that has been done makes her interesting and relatable, and is a great gateway into learning more about Ancient Egyptian history.

I enjoyed this book, which takes readers on a journey through time, and into a life that we can learn a bit more about through fiction. Another great book from Jackie French.