Mother-In-Law 

Times were when a girl married she not only acquired a husband, but also a mother-in-law. In those days the mother-in-law viewed her daughter very much like a personal slave. And it seemed, that the more the mother loved her son, the less fond she was of his wife.

Now, a lot of men really believe that their mum is next to Godliness. When their current girlfriend tells them ‘I don’t think your mother likes me’, they poo poo the idea. ‘Of course she likes you,’ they will reassure her with an indulgent laugh. ‘She loves me. I love you. How could she not love you, too?’

Perhaps some girlfriends believe that their man knows what he’s talking about, and get married under the misapprehension that all three of them will live happily ever after.

Poppaea, Nero’s girlfriend, while recognizing that his mum was firmly entrenched in her son’s life, hoped that there would be room for another woman in his life.

Time marched on, though, and while Nero was happy to whisper sweet nothings in her ear, those words she was longing to hear just weren’t coming. When she threw a fit, which she did more and more frequently, claiming he was just a mummy’s boy, Nero would fluster about how he did love her, and how it just wasn’t the right time for him to pop the question. Sick to death of words and promises it came to the stage of it’s either her or me.

Nero may have been delusionary in many aspects of his life, but when it came to his mother, he knew human nature. After all, he’d been tutored by that man of great thinking prowess, Seneca himself.

Whatever inducement he could offer her, he knew she liked the position of being the mother of the most important man in Rome. That she would relinquish this to any other woman, was not to be thought of.

As a man who’d been taught logic he knew what the correct equation was. He wanted Poppaea. Mum didn’t want Poppaea. He couldn’t have Poppaea while mum was around. Ergo, if he wanted Poppaea, mum had to go.

He did the only thing he could do. He tried to get rid of her by sinking the boat she was traveling on. But with the tenacity for which mother-in-laws are noted, while others around her drowned, she swam to the safety of the shore. In the end, Nero had a few of his men visit her with a sword in their hand. It might even be that he asked them to bring her heart in a box to ensure that the wicked witch was really dead.

It would be nice to say that both Nero and Poppaea lived happily ever after. But as it happened, neither of them did.

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