Queen of Persia, who refuses to be displayed to her husband's guests and is deposed for it in the first chapter of Esther — the vacancy that makes the rest of the book possible. ⚠ The text gives NO reason for her refusal, and the silence is almost certainly deliberate; an ancient Jewish reading (Talmud, Megillah 12b) supplies one by holding that she was summoned to appear wearing the royal crown and nothing else. The book never criticizes her. She holds her own banquet for the women in her own house, and she is the first person in the story to defy imperial power and pay for it — a pattern the book will repeat with a queen who succeeds. She is not named in Persian records, where Xerxes' queen is Amestris.