Agrippina the Younger

Agrippina the Younger was one of the most powerful and most dangerous women of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, born in AD 15 to the general Germanicus and great-granddaughter of Augustus himself. Roman empress from AD 49 as the fourth wife of her own uncle, the emperor Claudius, she is remembered by ancient and modern sources alike as ruthless, ambitious and domineering. She bent the machinery of the Roman state to her will, and manoeuvred her son Nero into the line of succession. When Claudius grew aware of her plotting, he died under suspicious circumstances in AD 54, poisoned, many believe, by her own hand. She dominated the early years of Nero's reign until she fell from his favour and was killed on his orders in AD 59.

Analytically, her Sun sits in Scorpio, the sign of power drawn through the mind, of strategy, secrecy and survival, and the poker face that reads everyone while revealing nothing. Her Moon in Capricorn is cold and Saturnian, the psyche of one who grew up fast and hard.

A natal chart maps temperament, never conduct. Agrippina's schemes and the deaths around her were her own choices, and no placement excuses them.