Little Coloured Bricks

You may have seen a few Cleopatra minifigs in the past decades but most of these minifigs are custom-made.

This year however, the Lego Group made up its mind in making a Cleopatra minifig. It is included in Lego’s minifig series 5.

Cleopatra’s most famous biographies were written after her unfortunate death which means that some of the information may have been exaggerated. As Khalil Gibran said, “Exaggeration is truth that lost its temper.” Although there may be exaggerations on the stories about the Queen of Egypt, her liaisons with the 2 greatest Romans who ever lived led to her destruction.

During her father’s reign, Cleopatra saw that her father had to bribe Romans to keep himself in the throne.

Her love story with Julius Caesar is a bittersweet affair. According to certain accounts, Cleopatra named her son Ptolemy Caesarion to emphasize that the boy is Caesar’s. Caesar was already married to Calpurnia at the time but Cleopatra claimed that she is Caesar’s wife adding to the brewing hatred of the Romans. Caesar was later on assassinated. He was stabbed to death by his senators.

Cleopatra’s adventures or political decisions for that matter lead her to the arms of Marc Antony. Cleopatra bore sons for the Roman governor but this along with other things, led Romans to question Marc Antony’s loyalty. Marc Antony killed himself when he heard word that Cleopatra had been killed. There are some accounts that say this is the base story for Romeo & Juliet.

After Marc Antony’s death, Cleopatra tried to secure her children’s succession to power by getting Octavian’s support. This did not work though and her kids were brought to Rome and killed.

One of her daughters lived though and she married the king of Mauretania and Numidia. This daughter’s name is Cleopatra Selene.