Cleopatra, the last queen of Egypt, is both one of the best-known and most misunderstood figures in ancient history. Since her death over 2,000 years ago almost all contemporary evidence of her life has vanished, but she has lived on through the writings of Greek and Roman scholars, which has in turn inspired works of poetry, literature, art, drama, and film through the ages.

According to the popular myth, Cleopatra was a woman of extraordinary beauty. Less flatteringly, she has been demonized as a depraved power-mad seductress who tried and failed to conquer the Roman world by getting its leading generals into bed.

But this image is the work of Roman propaganda, and the real Cleopatra was far more complex and alluring for plenty of reasons other than beauty. A woman of many talents, she was a skilled politician, a shrewd strategist, and an accomplished scholar, as well as being the richest ruler in the Mediterranean and one of the most influential women in ancient history. At the same time, her court was plagued by plotting, intrigue, and murder, and she exhibited the same ruthlessness as her ancestors. Custom obliged her to marry both of her brothers, but she preferred to rule alone and disposed of them before they came of age: waging a brutal civil war against the first and poisoning the second.

Far more successful (and famous) were her romances with two of the most prominent Romans of the day—Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. Both ended in tragedy, but also gave Ancient Egypt its last burst of life.

Although Cleopatra did not even live to see her 40th birthday, she packed a lot in. After coming to the throne at just 17 years of age, she spent more than two decades trying to preserve her kingdom’s independence and rebuild the empire her ancestors had gained and lost. In the end, it backfired, but that does not change the fact that some of the most momentous events in the history of human civilization happened during her reign.

Cleopatra’s defeat and suicide did not merely mark the end of the Ptolemaic dynasty. Her death brought three thousand years of pharaonic tradition crashing down in Egypt, and in its place the age of the Roman emperors was born.