Painting: A Persian princess (1898) – John William Godward
Her father, Cyrus the Great is gone. The empire he built — once held together by vision and mercy — fractures under the weight of ambition and fear. A brother disappears. Her other brother never arrived. A throne is claimed by a name no one dares question.
In the heart of this upheaval stands Atossa, daughter of Cyrus.
Raised among scholars, warriors, and kings, she learns that power is never given, it is taken, shaped, or quietly redirected.
But when everything she loves is stripped away — family, certainty, even truth itself — she faces a choice no princess is prepared for:
Will she become a silent witness to the empire’s collapse…
or the architect of its rebirth?
To restore what was lost, she must enter the hidden war behind the throne, where loyalty is wagered like coin, memory is a weapon, and a single whispered vow can decide the fate of nations.
The future of Persia does not lie in the hands of kings.
It lies in the resolve of one woman, and in the son who will one day inherit the world she remakes.
How she gets there, and what she must sacrifice, is a story history has only half remembered.
Kam Austine 