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You were born in 1856 in a small town in what was then the Austrian Empire, now part of Croatia. Because your ancestors came from Western Serbia, near Montenegro, you are a proud Serbian. Your father was an Orthodox priest and hoped you would follow in his footsteps, but you were not interested in that. In addition to having a photographic memory, you had an extreme talent for mathematics and were able to perform integral calculus in your head. You finished high school a year early and went back to your village, but there you caught cholera; you were sick for many months and nearly died. Your father promised that if you recovered you would be given the best possible engineering education.

In 1875 you enrolled at Austrian Polytechnic in Graz. You studied electrical engineering, mechanical engineering and physics, working from 3:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. seven days a week, and found time to start a Serbian culture club. You argued with your professors and in your third year you lost your scholarship. You had one vice—gambling—and you lost your tuition money. You were able to make it back but you never completed your final exams and were never awarded a degree. Ashamed, you left your home town and severed ties with your family.

In 1881 you moved to Budapest to work at the Budapest Telephone Exchange, then a startup. You were appointed chief electrician there. The following year you went to France to work for the Continental Edison Company, and in 1884 you relocated to New York City to work for Thomas Edison there, arriving with four cents and a letter of recommendation in your pocket. Edison hired you to do electrical engineering projects, which of course you excelled at. In 1885, you told Edison that you could redesign his inefficient motor and generators, and Edison remarked, “There’s $50,000 in it for you if you can do it.” You worked on the problem for months—and you accomplished the task. Edison then told you he was joking about the money and offered you a $10-per-week raise instead. Though this was a sizeable increase over your $18 weekly salary, you immediately resigned.

Your own company
In 1886 you formed your own company, but your investors did not agree with your project list and fired you. You spent the ensuing winter in misery, working as a ditch-digger and questioning the value of your education. After this existential crisis, you are more determined than ever to succeed.

In 1887 you start a new company with two new investors, one a New York–based attorney and the other the director of Western Union. They are to underwrite your efforts in exchange for 50% of your venture’s profits. They set up a lab for you in Manhattan and you are on your way.

An 18-year-old heiress, you are the daughter of a married Frenchwoman and her lover, scion of a banking fortune. Your life is good—your biological father sees to your needs and you enjoy indulging your every whim—but in this day and age one must have the respectability and social status of a good marriage.

A match made in heaven.
In the Edwardian age, it is all the rage among “new money” heiresses to marry into the aristocracy; several of your friends have become engaged to or have already married various members of the House of Lords. In fact, British aristocrats have taken to traveling to America to seek brides that come with a much-needed infusion of cash. Enter the 5th Earl of Carnarvon, recent heir to one of England’s great houses, whose noble-born family is free-spending yet poor, like so many others at the time.

Your marriage to this young man, complete with a detailed prenuptial contract involving certain financial guarantees, is a match made in heaven for you both. You instantly become a member of the aristocracy, and your money finances the dashing lifestyle to which your husband and his family have become accustomed. The two of you enjoy all the accoutrements: the yachts, the foreign travel, the collecting of rare books and artifacts. Still a teenager, you are now the châtelaine of your husband’s great family house, staffed by nearly 100 workers.

Though your conquests were in 88, 102 and 106 A.D., you are still a national hero.
You had the sheer audacity to take on an invincible enemy: the Roman Empire. Emperor Domitian advanced into your kingdom in 87 A.D. to punish your people for resisting him and to conquer the area once and for all. As your army’s general, you made sure the Roman campaign was not successful—you ambushed their legions, engineering a major victory for your side. The following year the Romans sent more troops; not only were they defeated but after this battle the Romans were required to pay your people large tributes each year to maintain the peace.

In 98 A.D., Trajan became the Roman emperor. Determined to end the humiliation, he dispatched some troops, conquered you and left you on the throne as a “client king” with a Roman garrison standing by to keep things under Roman control. Three years later, you destroyed this garrison. Trajan was furious; in 105 he constructed a bridge over what is now the Danube River and sent numerous reinforcements. This time, the Romans conquered your people, establishing permanent control in 106. You escaped with your family, but the Romans hunted you down so they could take you prisoner and parade their vanquished opponent through the streets of Rome. Ever the proud leader, you slashed your own throat rather than be taken alive.

The Romans took your head and right hand as trophies—but their admiration for you was so great that your bravery was depicted on Trajan’s Column, built in 113 A.D. to commemorate these very wars and still visible in Rome today. Roman historian Dio Cassius wrote that you were shrewd in the ways of war and continued, “He judged well when to attack and chose the right moment to retreat; he was an expert in ambuscades and a master in pitched battles; and he knew not only how to follow up a victory well, but also how to manage well a defeat. Hence he showed himself a worthy antagonist of the Romans for a long time.”

You make short work of your legal studies, then you and your younger brother start wandering around the German countryside, gathering data.

Your academic career
You begin your research early in the 19th century, just after the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. The Germany you know is a confederacy of 39 states unified only by their use of the German language. You are fascinated by what comprises this language—where its characteristics begin and end and how its dialects work. You make an extensive study of contemporary German speech by traveling from town to town, interviewing the citizenry and carefully noting their pronunciation and vocabulary. Since they must have something to talk about, you ask them to tell you folk tales they know from their childhood.

You and your brother publish an important law of linguistics bearing your name that has to do with phonetic shifting. After much hard work, you both secure positions at the University of Göttingen; in 1830 you achieve the rank of professor (and head university librarian) and your brother becomes a professor in 1835. A couple of years later you lose your positions for political reasons, but resettle in Berlin at the invitation of the King of Prussia and continue your work there. In your final years, you focus on producing a comprehensive German etymological dictionary; since your 39 volumes only cover letters A through F, others finally complete this work in 1960, 97 years after your death.

What you will be remembered for
In the course of your research, you collect more than 200 German folk tales and nearly 600 German sagas. You begin publishing collections of these stories in 1812, during a wave of popular interest in German folk culture, and continue expanding and refining the collections throughout your lifetime. You and your brother work hard to precisely record the stories as told to you and to render them faithfully.

You are the third ruler of the 19th dynasty.
When you were 10 years old, your father made you commander in chief of the army; you embarked on numerous campaigns to secure your country’s borders and vanquish attacks by powerful tribal enemies. Emerging victorious, you eventually established peace treaties with most of your neighbors. You also skillfully and decisively defeated the pirates who had been attacking and plundering your country’s sea routes.

By the time you were 20, the throne had passed to you. With a commanding presence, unusual height and distinctive red hair, you were born to rule—and you were determined to make your mark.

Drawing inspiration from the rulers of the past, you decided to embark on an extremely ambitious building campaign. You assembled a massive workforce and started constructing cities and temples—you even moved your nation’s capital to a new location. You are especially fond of statues of yourself—the bigger the better. As is only right, you are depicted in the trappings of various deities. On every wall that you have built—and on quite a few buildings you have restored and repurposed—your workers carved images, pictures and symbols about you and your glorious reign. Perhaps most importantly, you have built a massive mortuary temple complex to serve as a tomb for yourself and your many sons in the country’s royal burial place.

It is now late in your life, but you are satisfied with your long and successful reign. You have had many wives and more than 100 children. And as you had hoped, many of your monumental building projects still stand more than three millennia in the future for visitors to see, touch and admire.

Born in 742 in what is now Germany, you ascended the throne along with your brother Carloman in 768. When Carloman died three years later, you became the sole emperor of your realm at age 29.

Fifty-three campaigns
Life in Europe at that time was often short and violent, with many people living in tribal cultures that battled one another for power and resources. At the request of Pope Hadrian II you launched the first of many battles, besieging Pavia, assuming the crown of Lombardy and accepting the role of protector of the Church. During the next few years, you conquered and Christianized Bavaria and Saxony, destroyed the troublesome Avars, shielded Italy from raiding Saracens and strengthened your defenses against the expanding Spanish Moors. In the past 10 years you have annexed northern Spain and driven back the Slavs. You now rule all the peoples between the Vistula and the Atlantic, between the Baltic and the Pyrenees, with nearly all of Italy and much of the Balkans. How will you rule such a vast realm?

A kingdom for the ages
Not serving in the military will no longer be an option—you will make military service a condition of significant property ownership. You will create an imperial court and surround yourself with pomp and circumstance—not to mention nobles, clergy, scholars, servants and clerks. You will establish a system of local public assemblies where proposed legislation is discussed—and you will often appear at these assemblies yourself. Your government will develop a juried court system and enact legislation concerning agriculture, industry, finance, religion and public education. You will encourage commerce by standardizing weights, measures and tolls, building and repairing roads and bridges, taxing nobles and clergy and caring for the poor. And you will make a far-reaching plan to build a waterway running all the way from the North Sea to the Black Sea.

How will you defend the Northern borders?
To keep these hordes at bay, you pull together the existing patchwork of defenses, uniting the ramparts into a single, huge defense system. This “great wall” will stretch some 1,400 miles along your northern and northwestern frontier. Thus, your empire will be well defended.

Will your life’s work survive?
As is customary, you start your funeral preparations in good time—in fact, you allow some 40 years for the work, assigning over 700,000 slaves and artisans to the task. Such an important ruler must be protected for the afterlife. Tradition has it many of your servants will be buried with you. But ever the maverick, you instead create a massive army of terra cotta soldiers. Armed with chariots and cavalry, molded in exquisite detail, accurate down to rank, insignia and individual facial features, they are ready to defend you when the time comes.