The Figures

Leaders Ancient

Cleopatra VII

69–30 BC · Alexandria, Ptolemaic Egypt

The last active ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt, a Macedonian-Greek dynasty founded by a general of Alexander the Great. Fluent in many tongues and reputedly the first of her line to learn Egyptian, she was a shrewd and highly educated monarch who fought to preserve her kingdom's independence as Rome swallowed the Mediterranean. She allied with Julius Caesar and later Mark Antony — politically and personally — bore children by both, and ruled as pharaoh and living Isis. After defeat at Actium and the collapse of her cause, she took her own life rather than be paraded through Rome, and Egypt became a Roman province.

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Leaders Renaissance

Elizabeth I

English Renaissance

Queen of England and Ireland from 1558 to 1603, last monarch of the House of Tudor, daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. Her long reign — the Elizabethan Age — saw the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, the flowering of English drama and poetry, the settlement of the English Church, and the first stirrings of overseas ambition. Learned, shrewd, and famously unmarried, she styled herself wedded to her realm.

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Leaders Enlightenment

Grounded — answers from primary sources

George Washington

The Enlightenment

Commander-in-chief of the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War and the first President of the United States. A Virginia planter and surveyor, he led the colonial armies to victory over Britain, presided over the Constitutional Convention, and set enduring precedents for the presidency before voluntarily relinquishing power. He was also, throughout his life, an owner of enslaved people at his Mount Vernon estate.

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Leaders 1800s

Grounded — answers from primary sources

Abraham Lincoln

Civil War America

Sixteenth President of the United States, who led the nation through its Civil War, preserved the Union, issued the Emancipation Proclamation, and delivered the Gettysburg Address. Largely self-educated, he rose from a Kentucky log cabin to the highest office before his assassination in April 1865.

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Leaders Modern

Winston Churchill

20th Century

British statesman, orator, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister during the Second World War. His defiant wartime leadership and speeches rallied Britain against Nazi Germany, though his long career also carried a defended, and by the historical record harmful, commitment to the British Empire.

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