The last ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt — Greek by dynasty, Egyptian by cultural identity and political strategy — who allied with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony in the dying decades of the Roman Republic, presided over Egypt's absorption into the Roman Empire, and became one of the most mythologized figures in Western history, her actual political genius largely obscured by two thousand years of sexual legend.
Cleopatra VII was the first Ptolemaic ruler in 250 years to bother learning Egyptian. She spoke nine languages. She was a philosopher, a mathematician, and a political strategist who kept her kingdom independent longer than any contemporary could have managed. She has been played by Elizabeth Taylor. What she actually was — a Greek-speaking Egyptian queen navigating the collapse of the Hellenistic world and the rise of Roman empire — is far more interesting than the legend.