Cleopatra VII

Cleopatra VII Philopator was the last active ruler of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt, a Greek dynasty descended from one of Alexander the Great's generals that had ruled Egypt since 305 BCE, and the final pharaoh of Egypt in the ancient sense before Roman annexation. She came to the throne in 51 BCE at about eighteen years old, co-ruling first with her younger brother Ptolemy XIII and, after a civil war in which Julius Caesar intervened on her behalf, with her son by Caesar, Ptolemy XV Caesarion. Cleopatra was fluent in multiple languages, reportedly including Egyptian, unlike most of her Greek-speaking Ptolemaic predecessors, and worked to present herself to Egyptians as the reincarnation of the goddess Isis while maintaining Ptolemaic Egypt's independence through alliances with Rome's most powerful men, first Julius Caesar and, after his assassination, Mark Antony, with whom she had three children and a partnership that was both romantic and political. Her defeat alongside Antony by Octavian, the future Augustus, at the naval Battle of Actium in 31 BCE ended her kingdom's independence, and she died by suicide in Alexandria in 30 BCE, reportedly by the bite of an asp, after which Egypt was annexed as a Roman province. Cleopatra's later reputation, shaped heavily by hostile Roman propaganda from Octavian's court and later reworked by centuries of European art, drama and film, has often overshadowed the historical figure who was, by contemporary Ptolemaic and Egyptian standards, a capable ruler who kept her kingdom independent for two decades against overwhelming Roman power.