Review: 'The Wandering Queen: A Novel of Dido' by Claire Heywood

Dido, the famous queen of Carthage, died of a broken heart. I was never very fond of that part of the Aeneid, it felt like a cop out and Aeneas was not worth it. So when I saw Claire Heywood's The Wandering Queen promising to retell Dido's story, I was very intrigued. Thanks to Dutton and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Pub. Date: 10/02/2026
Publisher: Dutton

When the King of Tyre dies, he decrees that the rule of the kingdom will pass equally to both his children: Elissa, his clever and strong-willed daughter, and Pygmalion, her young half-brother. But Elissa, not yet skilled in the machinations of court, quickly finds herself sidelined by a band of powerful merchants in favor of her more malleable brother.

Forced out of her palace home, Elissa resolves to forge her own path. Both triumph and heartbreak await in the life that she builds, transforming herself from a sheltered princess into a strong and formidable leader. When she leads her followers on an epic journey in search of a new home in a faraway land, she earns herself a name that will echo through millennia: Dido, the wanderer.

Then one day, a mysterious stranger, Aeneas, arrives at the city gates, fleeing the Trojan War. As Dido and Aeneas are increasingly drawn to each other, Dido is forced to make an impossible choice between power and love.

I have avoided many adaptations of classical works, in part because I am very fond of many of the "original" works. I am a literary scholar which means I do adore the more formulaic, archaic, lyrical writing of older translations as well. I also have an issue with how some of the adaptations are marketed as providing feminist retellings in which some of the most awe-inspiring female characters of Antiquity become girl-bosses who have never done anything wrong in their lives. (Like, the only version of Medea in which she does not kill her children that I'll accept is Christa Wolf's, because how she reformulated the story spoke directly to Cold War tensions.) Since I haven't read most adaptations, this is purely an impression I get from the marketing and blurbs, but those have been enough to dissuade me from reading many of them. While I loved Circe by Madeline Miller, even that book did not hit me in the way Circe's depiction in the Odyssey does. All this to say that I went into The Wandering Queen a little hesitantly, although if there was ever a Classical female character that needed to be rescued from the clutches of her author, it was Dido. I have to admit that I was never really into Aeneas the way Virgil wrote him. I see why Achilles and Hector are so famous, I think Odysseus is a fascinating figure. Aeneas, however, ain't sh*t and Heywood can't really change that nor the fact that the story has Dido falling in love with him. Heywood does her best to show how and why this would happen, but this love affair still feels like a miscalculation on all fronts. The way Heywood handles it is probably as good as we can get, but I still felt myself sighing at Dido over him. However, despite that sighing, The Wandering Queen does feel like a nice complement to the Aeneid which allows us to expand our understanding of the story.

The Wandering Queen tells the stories of Elissa and Dido, who are the same woman but years apart. Elissa is the daughter of the King of Tyre, promised an equal part in ruling her beloved city, except that palace intrigue prevents her from taking the role she feels destined for. She now has to decide what is best: being of service to her people, regardless of title, or getting her due. Dido, meanwhile, gets to see her new city, Carthage, thriving. When Trojan survivors straggle in, she once again finds herself faced with a choice: stay true to the image of the widowed queen or dare to experience love again. The stories of Elissa and Dido are interwoven in an intriguing way, where the more you learn about young Elissa, the more you come to understand who Dido is now. She gets to be a complex woman with desires and ambitions, who is definitely smart but starts of somewhat naive. Both Elissa and Dido make mistakes and I was happy to see room for that within this story. I also liked that Heywood surrounded her with other female characters, even if sometimes it felt a little anachronistic how they dealt with one another. While Aeneas remains a hurdle to me, I really liked how Heywood resolved that element of Dido's life.

This is my first time reading anything by Claire Heywood and I really enjoyed her writing style. Although, as mentioned above, the writing sometimes feels a little too modern, I also know that this is a a me-thing. The Wandering Queen is a very accessible entryway into the story of Dido and I hope it does function as something of a gateway for readers to explore classical works as well. Heywood's writing is also very descriptive, meaning that Tyre is very vivid, as is Carthage itself. This is all a part of Heywood taking her research and bringing it to life. At the end of The Wandering Queen, Claire Heywood explains the various stories that exist around Dido and her own approach to this story. If Dido and Aeneas were historical people, they would have lived centuries apart, but this did not stop Virgil from making Dido a love-sick woman who was left behind. (I was gratified to find out that people already disliked this by the time to Aeneid was written!) Virgil's text is so famous that it has probably eclipsed any other tales of Dido, so seeing Heywood revive some of them in her book was lovely. I don't know if The Wandering Queen has fully converted me towards reading more adaptations of classical works, but I will definitely check out other books by her!

I give this novel...

4 Universes!

I did have a good time with The Wandering Queen, as much as I can while remaining an Aeneas hater. Dido is a fascinating figure and I'm very glad to see her receive some attention.