Jessica and Ashlee Simpson
Jessica and her younger sister, Ashlee, competed intensely for record sales during the early naughts, but according to VH1 at least, they’ve had “equal success” with hits including “Irresistible” and “Pieces of Me,” respectively. Both have been hotly criticised (Jessica for being an airhead, and Ashlee for plastic surgery), but “they survived scrutiny and have powered on.
Cleopatra and her sister, Arsinoe
“It can’t be easy having a sister who is much more famous and successful than you,” writes the Dangerous Women Project of how it must have been for Arsinoe, the younger sister of Cleopatra. Yeah, that Cleopatra, the one who seduced Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, and ultimately committed suicide by snake bite. Before all that went down, however, Cleopatra and Arsinoe had been bitter political rivals with Cleopatra ultimately ordering the 20-year old Arsinoe’s murder.
Beyoncé and Solange Knowles
There was a short time during their childhood when the two Grammy-winning sisters weren’t getting along, revealed their mother Tina Knowles in a 2018 Facebook chat with Maria Shriver, as reported by the Independent. The relationship was fraught because Solange is five years younger and Beyonce was on her way to being a superstar from a young age. “She [Beyoncé] couldn’t stand her for a minute. You know, they were little, [Solange] was all in her stuff, trying to hang around her and her friends and Beyoncé was really irritated…” So Knowles brought the two to therapy, despite criticism from her own family. “My family was like, ‘you’re going to make them crazy because they’re too young for you to take them,’ but I wanted Beyoncé to be sensitive to the fact that Solange had to deal with being a little bit in her shadow.” By all accounts, Tina’s early invention worked and the two siblings are each other’s biggest supporters to this day.