On the night Agrippina gives birth to her son, a man is strangled, his body thrown to the mob, and his family, friends, and allies slaughtered. Emperor Tiberius has spoken – dispatching Sejanus, his prefect who treacherously presumed to inherit all Rome. This is Roman justice.
It is an ill-omened start to Agrippina’s son’s life. But this new mother is grand-daughter of Augustus. Having seen her brothers exiled then executed by Tiberius, she knows the empire is no place for faint hearts. Even emperors dare not put their trust in underlings or guards. Only the bold, daring and merciless survive. But Tiberius – old, paranoid, dying – is not long for this world. Before he dies, he makes Agrippina’s surviving sibling Caligula his heir, drawing her deep into the forum’s murderous conspiracies.
Between the rages of her drunken charioteer husband and the mad whims of her brother, she must somehow protect her newborn son.
In Rome, a woman may not wield power, but she may command influence. Agrippina has little to offer her son but her wits, her ambition, and her belief in shaping your own destiny. If he is to become the most feared and notorious emperor of them all, then he can only learn at his mother’s knee. But first, they must survive…