Deepika Padukone's Padmavati first posters are viral. But do you know who is Rani Padmavati?

Deepika Padukone made the hearts of her fans skip a beat this morning. She unveiled the first-look posters of her next film, Padmavati, in which she is playing Rani Padmini. Her unibrow in Padmavati became a major talking point on social media.

Padmavati is set to hit the screens on December 1 this year. The first-look posters of Padmavati put a lot of speculation regarding the release date to rest. Padmavati is finally making it to the big screen this year itself.

Deepika plays the goddess-queen, Mallika-e-Chittor, Rani Padmini. She will be seen alongside Ranveer Singh and Shahid Kapoor in Padmavati. Shahid plays Deepika's husband, Raja Rawal Ratan Singh and Ranveer plays plunderer Alauddin Khilji.

With Deepika's look as Padmavati out today, a day that is marked auspicious because it is the beginning of Navratri, fans are waiting with bated breath to see both Shahid Kapoor and Ranveer Singh's looks in the film

Here is what you need to know about Rani Padmini:

1. The origins of the legend of Rani Padmini can be traced to the epic poem Padmavat, written by Malik Muhammad Jayasi.

2. Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Padmavati is based on the 14th Century siege of the Chittor fort when emperor Alauddin Khilji attacked Rajasthan in a bid to capture the beautiful queen, Padmini.

3. However, legend goes, before Alauddin's troops could reach the Chittor fort, Rani Padmini, along with a hundred other Rajput women, committed Jauhar. Jauhar is the Hindu custom of self-immolation that groups of women used to commit in order to avoid rape or imprisonment by enemy forces.

4. Now, the origins of Rani Padmini have been shrouded in doubt for a long time now. The first mention of the beautiful Rajput queen comes in the 16th century Sufi poet Jayasi's epic poem, Padmavat.

5. Jayasi's work is a fictional retelling of the siege of Chittorgrah that Turkic emperor Alauddin Khilji indeed undertook in 1303.

6. A few decades after Jayasi's Padmavat, came one of the most famous re-telling of the tale of Rani Padmini of Chittor. Abul Fazl, the famous chronicler of Mughal emperor Akbar's court, penned a work on Padmini that popularised the legend of the siege of Chittor.

7. If at all Rani Padmini and Raja Ratan Singh existed in the first place, is hugely debatable. The topic saw even more discussions, including attacks on Padmavati director Sanjay Leela Bhansali and the crew of the film, in the last few months. The work which is the beginning of the story of Rani Padmini, The Imperial Gazetter of India of 1909 states, "In the final verses of his work, the poet explains that it is all an allegory. By Chittor he means the body of man; by Ratan Singh, the soul; by the parrot, the guru or spiritual protector; by Padmavati, wisdom; by Alauddin, delusion, and so on."

So did Rani Padmini ever exist? Maybe the answer is lost in Chittorgarh. Or maybe it was all a figment of Malik Muhammad Jayasi's imagination. As of now, let's see how Sanjay Leela Bhansali tells his version of Padmavati.