  Polaris the Cepheid has been observed for centuries, presenting surprises and
changing our view of Cepheids and stellar astrophysics, in general.
Specifically, understanding Polaris helps anchor the Cepheid Leavitt law, but
the distance must be measured precisely. The recent debate regarding the
distance to Polaris has raised questions about its role in calibrating the
Leavitt law and even its evolutionary status. In this work, I present new
stellar evolution models of Cepheids to compare with previously measured CNO
abundances, period change and angular diameter. Based on the comparison, I show
that Polaris cannot be evolving along the first crossing of the Cepheid
instability strip and cannot have evolved from a rapidly-rotating main sequence
star. As such, Polaris must also be at least 118 pc away and pulsates in the
first overtone, disagreeing with the recent results of Turner et al. (2013).
