Claimants to Royalty

The man wearing Persia’s crown has no ears—and that may be the only proof he is not the dead prince he claims to be.

John Henry Ingram opens this late-nineteenth-century history with Persia under Cambyses, a king whose suspicion and violence have left his empire ripe for a bold pretender. A Magian named Smerdis, aided by his brother, takes the name of the prince Cambyses secretly had killed—and wins the throne while few know the real prince is gone. But Otanes, a powerful nobleman, has a way to test the claim: his daughter Phædyma can look closely while the king sleeps. In an empire where a name can make a ruler, what will she discover?

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