Professor Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones

But in his opinion, Xerxes was a dead ringer for the crown because his mother, Atossa, was all-powerful.

Which is really, really fascinating.

Why then?

Why is this woman, why does she have this kind of cachet?

Well, of course, Darius had had several wives before he became king.

and he had sons from these wives.

But once he became king, and you'll remember that he grabs the crown in a kind of coup d'etat,

He marries all the available Persian royal women and brings them into his harem and begets children on them straight away.

And Atossa, Xerxes' mother, is the eldest daughter of Cyrus the Great.

Ah, very prestigious.

Very prestigious.

So Xerxes is the first son born to Darius after he comes into his own as king and has the blood of Cyrus the Great flowing in his veins.

So I think what we have there is a case of what we can call porphogeniture.

That means born into the purple blood, you know, the royal blood is in his veins.

And so this is why he's chosen as king.

And I don't want to dismiss this idea that Atossa herself pushed this idea constantly, of course, as well.

It's to her advantage, you know, because if Xerxes became king, she would become queen mother and there was nobody to touch the queen mother.

Whereas wives and concubines of kings can drop from status, you know, depending on the favor that the king shows them.

The queen mother, who is the link between the two generations of kings, she can reign supreme in the harem.

She has the rank of the highest woman in the empire.