Mark Gagnon

His mother was Atossa, the woman that we mentioned before, daughter of Cyrus the Great, which meant that Xerxes carried the blood of both the empire's founder,

and its greatest administrator ever, Darius.

He wasn't the eldest son, that was his half-brother, Artabazanes, but Atossa was Darius' most important wife, and the fact that Xerxes was the grandson of Cyrus gave him a lot of legitimacy that the other princes simply couldn't match.

Now, of course, with every ancient kingdom, even until today, secession is a massive problem.

So when a monarch or a king or a pharaoh, whatever, has a kid,

They're probably going to have multiple wives.

And ultimately, all of those kids will be princes.

But it is the kid with the most pure bloodline or the kid that is the favorite of the monarch that is ultimately going to take the throne.

Or there might be a battle, a civil war, some type of assassination.

Who knows?

But in this case, it was Xerxes that takes the throne.

So when Darius dies in 486, Xerxes ascends and basically takes control of the most powerful empire on Earth.

He's roughly 32 at the time.

But Xerxes didn't have, you know, an easy day stepping into this new role.

He didn't exactly inherit a completely peaceful kingdom.

He inherited kind of a crisis.

You see, there were two major problems that Xerxes was facing the second he takes power.

The first problem was Egypt.

You see, Egypt at this time had revolted against Persian rule in 486.

And this was right around the time that Darius had passed away.