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In Game:

Louis-Michel le Peletier, Marquis de Saint-Fargeau was a French politician during the French Revolution and a member of the Parisian Rite of the Templar Order. An advisor of Grand Master François de la Serre from a young age, he eventually sided with François-Thomas Germain and plotted against de la Serre.

On May 5th, 1789, le Peletier attended the induction soirée of de la Serre's daughter, Élise, at the Palace of Versailleswith Lévesque, Sivert and Lafrenière. During the soirée, Sivert and his fellow Templar, the Roi des Thunes, murdered Grand Master de la Serre in the palace gardens, framing the Grand Master's adopted son, Arno Dorian, for the murder.

On the evening of March 31st, 1791, le Peletier and Lévesque went to the Hôtel de Beauvais to meet with Germain, who would explain the reason behind their orders. Since Lafrenière had discovered their betrayal of de la Serre, Lévesque feared that he would retaliate. Their fellow Templar Aloys la Touche informed them however, that Lafrenière had been killed hours earlier. Arno, now an Assassin, had been manipulated by Germain into killing Lafrenière, who had intended to strike at Germain's faction. Renouncing his opposition to the death penalty, he cast the deciding 361st vote for Louis' execution in 1793.

At the meeting, Frédéric Rouille presented evidence that King Louis had been plotting against the revolution. At Germain's request, le Peletier ensured that this evidence would become public. While a member of the National Convention, le Peletier worked covertly on a draft about education, suggesting that males and females were taught revolutionary ideas in state-run schools.

In celebration of the King's imminent execution, le Peletier attended a party at the Palais-Royal with his daughter, Louise-Suzanne, dining at the Café Fevrier. Unknown to him, Arno was also present. As le Peletier called for a bottle of wine, Arno placed a bottle cut with lead sugar at the bar. This bottle was served to le Peletier, who soon began to feel the effects of the poison.

Telling his daughter to find her nurse, le Peletier went into a hallway, where he was confronted by Arno. There, he told Arno that he was glad to see his daughter spared the sight of his death. He then claimed that all of his actions were done for the good of France, its people, and his own family. Noting that Arno was unmoved by this, he told the Assassin to kill him quickly. Arno complied, stabbing him with his Hidden Blade.

In Real Life:

Louis-Michel le Peletier, Marquis of Saint-Fargeau was born on May 29th, 1760 in Paris. He belonged to a well-known family, his great-grandfather, Michel Robert Le Peletier des Forts, count of Saint-Fargeau, having been Controller-General of Finances. After the death of his title-holding family, Le Peletier gained a vast amount of wealth.

He entered into politics by becoming a lawyer ("avocat") in the employ of the Place du Châtelet, a prison. In 1785 Le Peletier was advanced to avocat-general. In 1789 he was elected to the Parlement of Paris, and in that same year he became a deputy of the noblesse to the States-General.

Initially, he shared the conservative views of the majority of his class, but by degrees his ideas changed and became increasingly radical. On July 13th, 1789 he demanded the recall of Necker, whose dismissal by the king had aroused great excitement in Paris. In the Constituent Assembly he moved the abolition of the death penalty, of the galleys and of branding, and the substitution of beheading for hanging. This attitude won him great popularity, and on 21 June 1790 he was made president of the Constituent Assembly. He remained in this position until July 5th, 1790.

During the existence of the Legislative Assembly, he was elected President of the General Council for the Yonne département in 1791. He was then elected by this département to become a deputy to the Convention. Here he was in favor of the trial of Louis XVI by the Assembly and was a deciding vote for the death of the king.

On January 20th, 1793, the eve of the king's execution, Le Peletier was assassinated in a restaurant in the Palais Royal. His murderer, Philippe Nicolas Marie de Pâris, a member of the Garde du Corps, allegedly plunged a saber that he had hidden under his cloak into Le Peletier's chest. His assassin fled to Normandy, where, on the point of being discovered, he supposedly shot himself in the head. Other sources claim the real murderer fled to England where he died years later.

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The Convention honored Louis Michel Le Peletier with a magnificent funeral. His body was displayed in the Place Vendôme beneath the statue of King Louis XIV. Le Peletier was buried in the Panthéon in Paris in 1793. His body was removed by his family on February 14th, 1795.

In Game:

Philip IV, also known as Philip the Fair, was King of France from the Capetian dynasty that reigned from 1285 until his death in 1314.

In order to carry out the reform of the kingdom, Philip hired civil servants such as Guillaume de Nogaret. However, Nogaret was secretly the Mentor of the French Brotherhood of Assassins, and used his influence to manipulate Philip into disbanding the Templar Order. With the poisoning of Pope Benedict XI, the French-aligned Clement V succeeded him. Supported by the Papacy, Philip dissolved the Order to seize its fortunes and crush the political influence it held, urging other European monarchs to do the same.

Philip ordered the arrest of all Templars in France, and several raids were performed on 13 October 1307. One these took place at the Temple in Paris, the Order's headquarters. Led by Esquieu de Floyrac and the Master Assassin Thomas de Carneillon, Assassins disguised as Flemish mercenaries arrested Jacques de Molay, the Grand Master of the Templar Order.

As the Grand Master and his fellow Templars were imprisoned, they were charged with heresy and worship of the idol Baphomet. Under torture by Nogaret, Philippe de Marigny and William of Paris, several of them admitted to these charges. On 18 March 1314, de Molay and Geoffroi de Charney were burned at the stake. As Philip and Clement watched, the Grand Master cursed them, claiming that they would be punished by God for their actions against the Templars.

In Real Life:

Born at Fontainebleau around June 1268 while his grandfather was still ruling, Philip, the second son of Philip III (the Bold) and grandson of St. Louis (Louis IX), was not yet three when his mother, Isabella of Aragon, died on her return from the Crusade on which Louis IX had perished. The motherless Philip and his three brothers saw little of their father, who, stricken by Isabella’s death, threw himself into campaigning and administrative affairs. His troubled childhood and the series of blows he suffered explain in some measure the conflicting elements in his adult personality.

In 1276 Philip’s elder brother, Louis, died, and the shock of this event, which suddenly made Philip heir to the kingdom, was compounded by persistent rumours of poisoning and suspicions that Philip’s stepmother intended to see Isabella’s remaining sons destroyed. Vague allegations were circulated that Louis’s death was linked with certain unspecified “unnatural acts” of his father. These rumours, never satisfactorily put to rest, together with the unexpected change in Philip’s fortunes, apparently served to arouse in him feelings of insecurity and mistrust.

When Philip was 16, he was knighted and married to Joan of Navarre. In 1285 he accompanied his father to the south on a campaign to install Philip’s brother Charles on the throne of Aragon. He had no sympathy with the enterprise, however, which was backed by his stepmother and aimed against the king of Aragon, his late mother’s brother. When his father died in October 1285, Philip immediately abandoned the venture.

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Philip intensified his predecessors’ efforts to reform and rationalize the administration of the realm. He dispatched investigators to inquire into the conduct of royal officials and into infringements upon royal prerogatives. Philip persisted in seeking such reforms, which strengthened the monarchy’s position but angered the nobles, townsmen, and ecclesiastics who had profited from the laxer policies of earlier kings.

War with England began in 1294, initiating a 10-year period of conflict that severely strained Philip’s resources. There had been some naval clashes, but full-scale war might well have been avoided had not Philip, perhaps in a fit of youthful bravado, decided to demonstrate his power over England’s mighty Edward I, his vassal, for control of the duchy of Gascony. Philip’s victories in 1297 may have satisfied his ambitions, but they brought no territorial gain, for the many lands that Philip had seized were returned.

Nevertheless, the war was significant. First, the peace treaty of 1303 stipulated that Philip’s daughter Isabella should marry the future Edward II of England—an alliance that resulted in years of peace between the two kingdoms. Second, during the war, Philip’s vassal Guy of Dampierre, count of Flanders, had allied himself with Edward I, a move that Philip considered to be base treachery and that resulted in a breach between the two that persisted until long after Philip’s death.

His reign also saw war with the County of Flanders, another vassal, which gained temporary autonomy following Philip’s defeat at the Battle of the Golden Spurs (1302). In 1306, Philip the Fair expelled Jewish people from France and, in 1307, he annihilated the order of the Knights Templar. Philip was in debt to both groups and saw them as a "state within the state". To further strengthen the monarchy, he tried to control the French clergy and entered into conflict with Pope Boniface VIII. This conflict led to the transfer of the papal court to the enclave of Avignon in 1309.

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The Templars in France, unlike the ones in England, were subjected to torture and so often confessed to these heresies. There was shock throughout Europe when all Templars were arrested in France on the same day in 1307.  By March 1314 the last of the Templars were burnt at the stake, supposedly cursing the Pope and Philip IV that they would both die within the year.

The Pope died in April 1314. The Pope’s body was apparently placed in a church overnight and the church caught fire and the body turned to ashes.  Philip’s last year was troublesome. He found out two of his daughters-in-law were committing adultery. Their lovers were brutally put to death in the market square at Pontoise and the women were thrown into prison. His rigid morality could not cover up the scandal. In November Philip suffered a stroke while out hunting and died soon after at Fontainebleau.

In Game:

Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre was a French lawyer, politician and notable figure of the French Revolution, that launched one of the modern dictatorial systems.

On May 5th, 1789, Robespierre and his fellow Templars attended a private party at the Palace of Versailles. The party was secretly to host the induction of the daughter of the Order's Grand Master, François de la Serre, into the Order. On that same night however, de la Serre was murdered in a coup d'etat led by Germain. Germain's Templars plotted to instigate a widespread revolution across France. They sought to empower the middle class instead of the nobility, and by creating a capitalist society, it would be more easy for the Templars to control humanity.

In April 1791, the Templars met at the Hôtel de Beauvais, where Robespierre spoke to fellow Jacobins and called for the abolition of capital punishment. After the Templars had finished their meeting, Robespierre met up with Germain and Aloys la Touche. La Touche was placed under Robespierre's services, where he was tasked with spreading revolutionary terror in Versailles once the revolution had grown sufficiently radical and Robespierre had gained power.

The new republic was governed by the National Convention, in which Robespierre served as a deputy and represented Paris. He continued agitating revolutionaries to rise up against aristocrats and reversed his stance on capital punishment, now calling for the execution of the deposed King Louis. When the Convention tried Louis for a number of offenses, Robespierre and his fellow Templar Louis-Michel le Peletier voted for execution, and the King was executed by guillotine on January 21st, 1793.

In late 1793, Robespierre and the newly-founded Committee of Public Safety started the Reign of Terror, persecuting and often executing thousands of perceived counter-revolutionaries.

Due to the rising tyranny of Robespierre, he and his supporters were overthrown and executed by guillotine in the Thermidorian Reaction of 1794.

In Real Life:

Maximilien-François-Marie-Isidore de Robespierre was born on May 6th, 1758, in Arras, France. He was the son of a lawyer in Arras. After his mother’s death, his father left home, and Maximilien, along with his brother and sisters, was raised by his maternal grandparents. From 1765 he attended the college of the Oratorians at Arras, and in 1769 he was awarded a scholarship to the famous college of Louis-le-Grand in Paris, where he distinguished himself in philosophy and law. He received a law degree in 1781 and became a lawyer at Arras, where he set up house with his sister Charlotte. He soon made a name for himself and was appointed a judge at the Salle Épiscopale, a court with jurisdiction over the provostship of the diocese. His private practice provided him with a comfortable income.

When the summoning of the Estates-General (a national assembly that had not been called since 1614) was announced, he issued an appeal entitled À la nation artésienne sur la nécessité de réformer les Etats d’Artois (“To the People of Artois on the Necessity of Reforming the Estates of Artois”). In March 1789 the citizens of Arras chose him as one of their representatives, and the Third Estate (the commons) of the bailiwick elected him fifth of the eight deputies from Artois. Thus he began his political career at the age of 30.

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In April 1789, Robespierre was elected president of the powerful Jacobin political faction. A year later, he participated in writing the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, the foundation of the French constitution. When the people of Paris rose up against King Louis XVI in August 1792, Robespierre was elected to head the Paris delegation to the new National Convention. In December of that year, he successfully argued for the execution of the king and continued to encourage the crowds to rise up against the aristocracy.

On July 27th, 1793, Maximilien Robespierre was elected to the Committee of Public Safety, formed to oversee the government with virtual dictatorial control. Faced with pressures both from the outside and from within, the Revolutionary government instituted the Reign of Terror in September. In the next eleven months, 300,000 suspected enemies of the Revolution were arrested and more than 17,000 were executed, most by guillotine. In the orgy of bloodshed, Robespierre was able to eliminate many of his political opponents.

On June 4th, 1794, Robespierre was almost unanimously elected president of the National Convention. Six days later, a law was passed that suspended a suspect’s right to public trial and to legal assistance. In just a month, 1,400 enemies of the Revolution were guillotined. The Terror was being escalated just when foreign invasion no longer threatened the republic, and an awkward coalition of the right and the left formed to oppose Robespierre and his followers.

The next month, Robespierre and his allies were placed under arrest by the National Assembly. Robespierre was taken to the Luxembourg prison in Paris, but the warden refused to jail him, and he fled to the Hotel de Ville. Armed supporters arrived to aid him, but he refused to lead a new insurrection. When he received word that the National Convention had declared him an outlaw, he shot himself in the head but only succeeded in wounding his jaw. Shortly thereafter, troops of the National Convention attacked the Hotel de Ville and seized Robespierre and his allies. The next evening, July 28th, Robespierre and 21 others were guillotined without a trial in the Place de la Revolution. During the next few days, another 82 Robespierre followers were executed. The Reign of Terror was at an end.

After the coup, the Committee of Public Safety lost its credibility and the French Revolution became distinctly less radical. France saw the return of bourgeois values, corruption and further military failure. In 1799, a military coup led by Napoleon Bonaparte overthrew the Directory and established him as first consul, with dictatorial powers. In 1804, Napoleon proclaimed himself emperor of France.

In Game:

Pope Clement V, born Raymond Bertrand de Got, was a French prelate and later Pope from 1305 until his death. He was also the first of the so-called Avignon Popes.

A pawn of the Assassins and Philip IV of France, Clement came to power after Benedict XI was poisoned by the Assassin Mentor Guillaume de Nogaret. Under influence of Nogaret and the Assassins, Philip and Clement collaborated to disband the Order of the Knights Templar after they had been falsely accused of heresy.

In 1308 however, Clement wrote a document which absolved Templar Grand Master Jacques de Molay of all charges. In order to ensure that their plan to destroy the Templars continued, the Assassins stole the document, which would only be re-discovered in 2001.

In 1312, Clement officially disbanded the Knights Templar in his papal bull, Vox in excelso. All of the Order's assets were later given to the Knights Hospitalier. After a seven year trial, Clement was present during the burning of Jacques de Molay in 1314. Jacques while being burned cursed Clement, claiming he would die within the year.

In Real Life:

Raymond Bertrand de Got, of Aquitaine, France, was born in 1264. He entered the Church almost as an afterthought, with most of his energy being focused on winemaking and patronizing the arts. His brother had been a very wealthy vintner, and de Got was of noble birth, so it seemed natural to buy himself a bishopric, which was standard practice at the time.

As Archbishop of Bordeaux, Bertrand de Got was actually a subject of the King of England, but from early youth he had been a personal friend of Philip the Fair. Nevertheless, he had remained faithful to Boniface VIII. The new pope came from a distinguished family.

Bishop of Comminges from March 1295, he became archbishop of Bordeaux in 1299. He was elected pope through the manipulation of King Philip IV the Fair of France at Perugia in 1305. By creating a majority of French cardinals, Clement assured a line of French popes. His own pontificate was marked by woe, much of it caused by Philip.

Not allowing the church a role in secular affairs, Philip forced Clement to annul Pope Boniface VIII’sbulls Clericis Laicos, forbidding clergy to pay subsidies to lay authorities, and Unam Sanctam,defining the pope’s supreme authority. From 1307 Philip wanted to destroy the Knights Templars, a powerful religious military order of knighthood. After Philip accused the Templars of heresy, Clement arranged for a council to meet at Vienne, Dauphiné, in order to settle the issue. The prospect of this council prompted Clement to select Avignon, where he arrived in 1309, for his residence; he found it to be a more suitable centre for church administration than Rome, primarily for political reasons. The Council of Vienne convened in 1311. Clement approved the council’s decision to charge heresy against the Spirituals, Franciscan extremists who observed absolute material poverty. In April 1312 Philip forced Clement, outside the council, to suppress the Templars. Furthermore, Clement was obliged to dissolve the Templars himself so as not to leave their extinction to Philip and to erase from the papal registers all apostolic letters against Philip and his agents.

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Although he supported the election in 1308 of the German king Henry VII and his elevation as Holy Roman emperor in 1312, Clement was influenced by the Council of Vienne and by French pressure to favor King Robert of Naples when Henry prepared war against him. Consequently, Clement adopted an anti-imperial stand and in 1313 threatened Henry with excommunication. Upon Henry’s death, Clement, claiming to rule while the throne was vacant, gave Robert the title of imperial vicar in Italy.

Clement openly favored his relatives and appears to have had a large secret treasure. An adroit pontiff but timid and chronically ill from cancer, he left a notable contribution to canon law in the Clementinae, a collection of his decretals and those of the Council of Vienne later promulgated by his successor, Pope John XXII, in 1317. He made the school at Perugia a university and created chairs of Asiatic languages at Paris, France; Bologna, Italy; Oxford, England; and Salamanca, Spain. For yielding to France and complying with Philip, for turning against Henry, for practicing simony (selling ecclesiastical offices), and for transferring the papal see from Rome to Avignon, Clement was censured by Dante in Inferno XIX as “a shepherd without law, of uglier deed” and a “new Jason.” He was responsible for the “Babylonian Captivity” (1309–77), during which the papacy abandoned its traditional residence in Rome for Avignon.

In Game:

Marie Tussaud, born Anna Maria Grosholtz, was a French artist who became known for her wax sculptures and Madame Tussauds, the wax museum that she founded in London.

After the French Revolution broke out, the monarchy fell and Tussaud's ties with the royal court put her in a dangerous position. Arrested for her royalist sympathies, she was imprisoned in the same cell as Joséphine de Beauharnais. Just as Tussaud's hair was cut in preparation for her execution, an order came for her release. In return for her freedom, she had to sculpt wax figures and death masks of the heads of famous Frenchmen such as Jean-Paul Marat, as well as those who had fallen to the guillotine, such as Marie Antoinette.

However, the guillotined heads of Jacques Pierre Brissot, Olympe de Gouges and Jacques Hébert were stolen by various people. Tussaud therefore had the Assassin Arno Dorian recover them. The sculpted heads proved popular with revolutionary crowds, who paraded them through the streets of Paris.

In the meantime, Lessard had become a sans-culottes leader and wanted Tussaud dead after she had escaped the guillotine. He had his men take over her shop and capture her assistants while he searched for Tussaud herself at one of her exhibitions. To her luck, Tussaud had stayed away from both places. Contacting Arno once more, she had him ensure the safety of her assistants and kill Lessard.

In Real Life:

Anna Maria "Marie" Tussaud was born on December 1st, 1761 in Strasbourg, France. Her father, Joseph Grosholtz, was killed in the Seven Years' War just two months before Marie was born. At the age of six her mother, Anne-Marie Walder, took her to Bern, in Switzerland. There the family moved into the home of local doctor Philippe Curtius (1741–1794), for whom Anne-Marie acted as housekeeper.

Curtius, who Marie would call her uncle, was not only a physician, but he was also skilled in wax modelling. He initially used his talent as wax sculptor to illustrate anatomy but later for portraits. He moved to Paris in 1765 to establish a Cabinet de Portraits En Cire (Wax portraiture firm). In that year, he made a waxwork of Louis XV's last mistress, Madame du Barry, a cast that is the oldest work currently on display.

A year later, Tussaud and her mother joined Curtius in Paris. The first exhibition of Curtius' waxworks was shown in 1770 and attracted a large crowd. In 1776, the exhibition was moved to the Palais Royal and, in 1782, Curtius opened a second exhibit, the Caverne des Grands Voleurs (Cavern of the Grand Thieves), a precursor to Tussaud's Chamber of Horrors, on Boulevard du Temple.

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Curtius taught Tussaud the art of wax modelling. She showed talent for the technique and began working for him as an artist. In 1777, she created her first wax figure, that of Voltaire. From 1780 until the Revolution in 1789, Tussaud created many of her most famous portraits of celebrities such as those of philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Benjamin Franklin. During this period her memoirs claim she became employed to teach votive making to Élisabeth, the sister of Louis XVI. In her memoirs, she admitted to be privy to private conversations between the princess and her brother and members of his court. She also claimed that members of the royal family were so pleased with her work that she was invited to live at Versailles for a period of 9 years, though no contemporary evidence confirm her accounts.

During the French Revolution, Tussaud was perceived as a royal sympathiser; in the Reign of Terror she was arrested, along with Joséphine de Beauharnais, and her head was shaved in preparation for her execution by guillotine. She said she was released thanks to Collot d'Herbois' support for Curtius and his household. Tussaud said she was then employed to make death masks of the revolution's famous victims, including Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, Marat, and Robespierre.

Her marriage in 1795 to François Tussaud, an engineer from Mâcon, was not a success; and in 1802 she took her two sons and her collection of wax models to England. She toured the British Isles for 33 years before she finally established her first permanent exhibition in Baker Street, on the upper floor of the "Baker Street Bazaar.” In 1838, she wrote her memoirs. In 1842, she made a self-portrait which is now on display at the entrance of her museum. Some of the sculptures done by Tussaud herself still exist.

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She died in her sleep in London on April 16th, 1850 at the age of 88. There is a memorial tablet to Madame Marie Tussaud on the right side of the nave of St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church, Cadogan Street, London.

Upon Marie Tussaud's retirement, her son François (or Francis) became chief artist for the Exhibition. He was succeeded in turn by his son Joseph, who was succeeded by his son John Theodore Tussaud.

Madame Tussaud's wax museum has now grown to become one of the major tourist attractions in London, and has expanded with branches in Amsterdam, Beijing, Bangkok, Berlin, Blackpool, Sydney, Hong Kong, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Shanghai, Washington, D.C., New York City, Orlando, Hollywood, Singapore, Vienna and recently New Delhi.

In Game:

Neferneferuaten Nefertiti was an Egyptian queen and the wife of Akhenaten, a pharaoh of the Amarna Period of Egypt.

Nefertiti and her husband were known for a religious revolution, in which they worshiped one god only, Aten, or the sun disc. With her husband, she reigned at what was arguably the wealthiest period of Ancient Egyptian history. After her death, Nefertiti was buried in a rock-cut tomb in the Valley of the Kings.

In 38 BCE Nefertiti's spirit, alongside those of her husband, Akhenaten, her son, Tutankhamun, and the Great Pharaoh Ramesses II, were seemingly returned to the world of the living by the God's Wife of Amun, Isidora, who had possession of the Aten.

In Real Life:

Nefertiti’s parentage is unrecorded, but, as her name translates as “A Beautiful Woman Has Come,” early Egyptologists believed that she must have been a princess from Mitanni (Syria). There is strong circumstantial evidence, however, to suggest that she was the Egyptian-born daughter of the courtier Ay, brother of Akhenaton’s mother, Tiy. Although nothing is known of Nefertiti’s parentage, she did have a younger sister, Mutnodjmet.

The exact date when Nefertiti married Amenhotep III's son, the future pharaoh Amenhotep IV, is unknown. It is believed she was 15 when they wed, which may have been before Akhenaten assumed the throne. They apparently ruled together from 1353 to 1336 B.C. and had six daughters within ten years of her marriage, with speculation that they may have also had a son. The elder three daughters were born at Thebes and the younger three at Tell el-Amarna. Two of her daughters became queens of Egypt. Their daughter Ankhesenamun would eventually marry her half brother Tutankhamun, the future ruler of Egypt.

The earliest images of Nefertiti come from the Theban tombs of the royal butler Parennefer and the vizier Ramose, where she is shown accompanying her husband. In the Theban temple known as Hwt-Benben (“Mansion of the Benben Stone”; the benben was a cult object associated with solar ritual), Nefertiti played a more prominent role, usurping kingly privileges in order to serve as a priest and offer to the Aton. Artwork from the day depicts the couple and their daughters in an unusually naturalistic and individualistic style, more so than from earlier eras. The king and his head queen seem to be inseparable in reliefs, often shown riding in chariots together and even kissing in public. It has been stated that the couple may have had a genuine romantic connection, a dynamic not generally seen in depictions of ancient pharaohs. A group of blocks recovered from Karnak (Luxor) and Hermopolis Magna (Al-Ashmunayn) shows Nefertiti participating in the ritual smiting of the female enemies of Egypt. She wears her own unique headdress—a tall, straight-edged, flat-topped blue crown.

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By the end of Akhenaton’s fifth regnal year, the Aton had become Egypt’s dominant national god. The old state temples were closed and the court transferred to a purpose-built capital city, Akhetaton (Amarna). Here Nefertiti continued to play an important religious role, worshipping alongside her husband and serving as the female element in the divine triad formed by the god Aton, the king Akhenaton, and his queen. Her sexuality, emphasized by her exaggeratedly feminine body shape and her fine linen garments, and her fertility, emphasized by the constant appearance of the six princesses, indicate that she was considered a living fertility goddess. Nefertiti and the royal family appeared on private devotional stelae and on the walls of nonroyal tombs, and images of Nefertiti stood at the four corners of her husband’s sarcophagus.

Some historians, having considered her reliefs and statuary, believe that Nefertiti may have acted as queen regnant—her husband’s coruler rather than his consort. However, the evidence is by no means conclusive, and there is no written evidence to confirm her political status.

Soon after Akhenaton’s 12th regnal year, one of the princesses died, three disappeared (and are also presumed to have died), and Nefertiti vanished. The simplest inference is that Nefertiti also died, but there is no record of her death and no evidence that she was ever buried in the Amarna royal tomb. Early Egyptologists, misunderstanding the textual evidence recovered from the Maru-Aten sun temple at Amarna, deduced that Nefertiti had separated from Akhenaton and had retired to live either in the north palace at Amarna or in Thebes. This theory is now discredited. Others have suggested that she outlived her husband, took the name Smenkhkare, and ruled alone as female king before handing the throne to Tutankhamen. There is good evidence for a King Smenkhkare, but the identification in the 20th century of a male body buried in the Valley of the Kings as Tutankhamen’s brother makes it unlikely that Nefertiti and Smenkhkare were the same person.

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Nefertiti’s body has never been discovered. Had she died at Amarna, it seems inconceivable that she would not have been buried in the Amarna royal tomb. But the burial in the Valley of the Kings confirms that at least one of the Amarna burials was reinterred at Thebes during Tutankhamen’s reign. Egyptologists have therefore speculated that Nefertiti may be one of the unidentified bodies recovered from the caches of royal mummies in the Valley of the Kings. In the early 21st century attention has focused on the “Younger Lady” found in the tomb of Amenhotep II, although it is now accepted that this body is almost certainly too young to be Nefertiti.

Amarna was abandoned soon after Akhenaton’s death, and Nefertiti was forgotten until, in 1912, a German archaeological mission led by Ludwig Borchardt discovered a portrait bust of Nefertiti lying in the ruins of the Amarna workshop of the sculptor Thutmose. The bust went on display at the Egyptian Museum in Berlin in the 1920s and immediately attracted worldwide attention, causing Nefertiti to become one of the most recognizable and, despite a missing left eye, most beautiful female figures from the ancient world.