The character changed from the wild and ugly creature of early publications to what he understood as the female Orient counterpart to the Indian chief Winnetou, both personifying mysticism and the ascent from a low, lustful person, rising to become a nobly spirited person. Several times it is referred to her as the soul of mankind. He states in his autobiography that he modelled the character after his own grandmother, with whom he was very close and who raised him in his early childhood, especially during his blindness.