Zenobia

Zenobia was queen of Palmyra and ruled its expanding state in the name of her young son Vaballathus during the third-century Roman crisis. Her armies took control of Egypt and much of the eastern Mediterranean before the emperor Aurelian defeated her in AD 272. She was captured and taken west, but ancient accounts disagree about whether she died soon afterward or lived in honourable retirement near Rome.

Zenobia has inspired many historical novels, including Haley Elizabeth Garwood’s Zenobia, which presents her rise and confrontation with Rome as an epic political story. Fiction about Aurelian and the crisis of the third century also uses her as a rare female ruler who could challenge imperial authority on a continental scale.

In Harry Sidebottom’s Lion of the Sun, Ballista’s search for safety and revenge unfolds alongside the creation of a new military order, with Zenobia and the Palmyrene court positioned between loyalty to Rome and their own ambitions.