Genesis | Exodus through Deuteronomy | Joshua | Judges | Samuel | Kings | Esther | Job | Matthew through John | Acts
open/close all folders
King Ahasuerus/Emperor Xerxes
- A Round of Drinks for the House: Throws a lavish six-month party for all his subjects (especially the upper classes) in celebration of his victory.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Vashti refusing to appear before his guests results in him kicking her out of the place and issuing an edict declaring that the father is the head of the family and the one whose language should be learned by his children. To be fair, that was because he caved to pressure from his advisors. On the other hand, it's not like he had to make that choice.
- Drunk with Power: He's all to eager to throw his weight around.
- The Emperor: He was in charge of the Persian Empire
, which stretched throughout much of the Middle East, and all the way down into India, as well as a portion of North Africa. - Forgot I Could Change the Rules: Averted. Once a rule is put into the law of the Medes and Persians, the king can not change it. It takes making a law allowing the Jews to arm themselves in self defense against those following a previous law to resolve the conflict.
- Historical Domain Character: Either Xerxes I or Artaxerxes II.
- Idiot Ball: Because he trusts Haman so much, he doesn't even bother to check which race he's being asked to wipe out. Maybe genocide was common for him?
- Slave to PR: Relies quite heavily on his advisors...which isn't always a good thing.
- Toilet Seat Divorce: Divorces Vashti because she refused to make an appearance (possibly a naked appearance) at his banquet.
- What Have I Done: Regrets sending Vashti away, but once a Royal Decree was made in Ancient Persia, there was no taking it back.
Queen Vashti
"And the king ordered his wife Vashti to appear before his guests wearing her crown, that he might display her beauty before them, but she came not."
- Beauty Is Bad: Viewed by some as defiant and haughty
- Foil: To Esther
- Morton's Fork: Refuse to make a naked appearance at your husband's party and be punished (possibly executed) for disobeying Your Husband, The King (i.e. treason), or make the naked appearance and be punished (possibly executed) for letting men who aren't your husband, The King ogle you (i.e. treason)? Decisions, decisions...
- Ms. Fanservice: Defied; her husband asked her to come to his banquet to show her off, but she refused
- Put on a Bus
- Romantic False Lead
- What Happened to the Mouse?: After she is banished from the empire, she is never mentioned again, and it is not known what happened to her.
- World's Most Beautiful Woman: So beautiful that her husband wants to show her off.
- You Can Leave Your Hat On: One interpretation of her refusal to come to the party wearing her royal crown is that it was actually a request to wear only her crown.
Queen Esther
"I will go to the king, even if it is forbidden. And if I perish, I perish"
- Guile Heroine: She uses her wits and good looks to save the Jews from Haman.
- The High Queen: She quickly graduates into this role.
- Hot Consort: Became this to the King of Persia.
- Informed Judaism: Her Jewishness is a major plot point, but she apparently passed as a non-Jew well enough that her own husband was surprised to find out her ethnicity/religion.
- According to the Jewish tradition, the reason this was successful was because she became a vegan while living in the Persian palace. She's usually depicted as eating beans and poppy seeds, with the latter being a popular filling for hamentaschen and the former being a part of the Purim day feast in some traditions.
- Morality Pet: Becomes this to Xerxes.
- Never a Self-Made Woman: Saves her people through her husband, the king.
- Please Spare Him, My Liege!: Much of the plot is her trying to find the right circumstances to plead with Xerxes to cancel Haman's planned genocide of the Jews.
- Rags to Royalty: She is chosen to be queen (to replace Queen Vashti after her husband Ahasuerus/Xerxes banished her from the empire). Esther is an ordinary young girl, and at that one of the Jews living in exile in Babylon, but she is chosen by the king himself out of a harem on account of her beauty. She keeps herself there thanks to her charm and her wits, and ultimately saves her people.
- Second Love: To Ahasuerus/Xerxes, the king
- Self-Made Man: Manages to be quite successful even with a lack of miracles backing her up. Often used to drive home the point "God only helps when needed"
- Spanner in the Works: She ended up completely ruining Haman's plans to wipe out her people.
- Stellar Name: Her name means "star".
- Suddenly Ethnicity: The audience knows she's Jewish all along, but she manages to keep her ethnicity secret so it comes as a surprise to her own husband.
- Time Skip: Esther's crowning was delayed by 4 years possibly because Xerxes was fighting those pesky Greeks.
- World's Most Beautiful Woman: She was chosen as queen because she was regarded as the most beautiful woman in the Persian Empire. (Which did, in fact, stretch across much of the known world at that time.)
Mordecai the Judean
"See how the king rewards a man he wishes to honor!"
- Dude, Where's My Reward?: It takes several years for him to get rewarded for saving the king's life.
- Defiant to the End: He refuses to kneel before Haman, even under threat of death.
- The Good Chancellor: Most tellings have him being given Haman's old job as the king's right hand man.
- Old Master: To Esther.
- Parental Substitute: He took care of Esther after her parents died when she was a little girl.
Haman the Agagite
Haman* the Agagite
"Who else would the king honor aside from me?"
- Adaptational Nationality: The Greek additions change Haman's nationality to being a Macedonian.
- Ain't Too Proud to Beg: When he realizes his goose is cooked he immediately starts begging for his life.
- Asshole Victim: Haman's Humiliation Conga couldn't have happened to a more deserving fellow.
- Biblical Bad Guy: One of, if not the very baddest (even topping Satan himself), for being the first to propose a Final Solution against the Jews.
- He figures in several Talmudic legends where nature itself recognizes how evil he is and recoils from him. A particularly amusing one has all the trees in the world protest at being made into the gallows where he will be hanged, because they don't want to be defiled with his blood. Only the thorn tree can't find an excuse, so the gallows was made from thorn wood.
- He's also shown up many places in pop culture, including an episode of South Park where he tries to come back and kill the Jews again, and Scooby-Doo in Arabian Nights where he's an evil Vizier.
- He figures in several Talmudic legends
- Big Bad: His plan to exterminate the Jewish race drives the plot and Esther's decisions.
- Death by Irony: Hanged on his own gallows that were built for Mordechai.
- Dirty Coward: He was perfectly willing to commit genocide because of a perceived insult but when his own life is on the line he immediately begins pleading for his life.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Tried to have Mordechai hanged and the entire Hebrew race exterminated just because one Jew refused to bow to him.
- Evil Chancellor: A Persian minister who tried to convince his king to exterminate the Jewish population that was scattered in the Persian Empire. Since the queen was secretly Jewish (and her cousin had saved the king's life), this did not go well for him. He is probably one of the oldest in the book, as well as one of the most evil.
- Evil Is Petty: One of the best examples in all of literature. The man wanted to commit freaking genocide just because a single Jew refused to bow to him.
- Hate Sink: Haman possibly lays the groundwork for characters who are designed to be loathed as much as possible, considering his narcissism, ambition, and Jew-Hatred. Haman forces citizens to bow to him, and is suggested to have embroidered a graven image into his clothing, essentially forcing them to worship an Idol. When his fellow advisor, Mordecai the Judean, refuses to bow for this reason, Haman plots a genocide against the Jewish people, as well as personally building a gallows for Mordecai when the latter still refuses to bow. It is telling that a near universal custom when reading Megillat Ester (the Hebrew name of the work) is to jeer at least when Haman’s name is first and last mentioned, making him an odd religiously significant version of a character meant to draw ire from the audience.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: He builds a gallows to execute Mordechai, and winds up getting hanged on it himself.
- Humiliation Conga: Haman's comeuppance is a fairly epic one. First he has to give an elaborate parade to publicly honor his hated rival Mordechai, due to a misunderstanding where Haman was expecting himself to be the honoree. Then his fancy dinner with the king and queen turns out to be a trap to expose him as the villain. Then when he tries to plead for his life, the king assumes he's trying to assault the queen. He winds up Hoist by His Own Petard on the gallows he built for Mordechai. You almost feel sorry for the guy. Almost.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: As was the usual Persian practice of the time, the "gallows" Haman builds for Mordechai (and eventually gets hanged on himself) was probably an impaling stake. It was 50 cubits high, or about 75 feet. Ouch.
- Jerkass: Oh boy. It takes a special kind of awful to want to wipe out a group of people over a petty slight.
- Laser-Guided Karma: At the very same meeting when he tries to ask for Mordechai's death, he ends up accidentally telling the king to lavishly reward him and give him a parade in his honor. Haman ends up traveling through the city singing of Mordechai's heroism through his gritted teeth.
- Last of His Kind: Was believed to be the last of the Amalekites, whom God told His people to destroy completely.
- Kneel Before Zod: He is completely furious that Mordechai, being a Jew, doesn't bow to him.
- Manipulative Bastard: Haman exploits his position as the Emperor's vizier in order to gain power, and to convince the latter to enable him to perpetrate a genocide against Persian Jewry.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Haman's attempt at getting a death warrant for Mordechai becomes the occasion for giving Mordechai a long-overdue celebration for saving the king's life, much to Haman's dismay.
- Oh, Crap!: Upon realizing that his queen (Esther) is one of the very people he plans to have massacred, right when she outs him to the king.
- Original Position Fallacy: Provided a splendid example when he suggested an elaborate public ceremony to celebrate "someone whom the king delights to honor", thinking that he was going to be the honoree. Turned out the parade was for Mordechai.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: His hatred of the Jewish people is one of his defining character traits.
- Pride: As shown in the above quote. It backfires badly on him in a meeting where the king says he wants to lavishly reward someone for their services to him. Haman assumes the king is talking about him and suggests the reward of a parade celebrating their heroism... only to find to his horror the king is actually talking about his hated rival Mordechai.
- Psychopathic Manchild: An extreme example. Even for a chancellor, Haman is a Spoiled Brat all grown-up, being beyond arrogant, egotistical, cowardly, having fits when things don't go his way, and most egregious of all, his reason for attempting genocide being that his rival refused to bow to him. What ultimately sells it though, is his Villainous Breakdown mentioned below that is nothing but a massive, deranged temper tantrum he throws just like any child would.
- Smug Snake: One of the oldest examples. He's arrogant, thin-skinned, and prone to losing his dignity when things don't go according to plan.
- The Sociopath: He is a petty and selfish individual who can also be a successful manipulator while lacking any care for causing genocide over a perceived insult to his pride. He is a well-known unjustified Biblical Bad Guy who cares only for himself and how he can use his position of power to force his will unto others or get rid of opposition to him.
- Un-person: During ancient celebrations of Purim, people would bring stones or slabs of wood with Haman's name on them. When he is mentioned the audience would use chisels and hammers to deface his name. This is also ostensibly the reason that, in modern celebrations of Purim, Audience Participation responds to his name with boos and jeers and loud noisemakers.
- Villainous Breakdown: Cried to his wife when he found out Mordechai was to be honored for uncovering a conspiracy years before. He also spent his last moments begging Esther for mercy. It causes the king to think he's assaulting her.
- Would Hurt a Child: Was fully prepared to commit genocide on Mordecai's people, including the women and the children. As you might have guessed by now, he wasn't really the nicest guy around even for Biblical times.
Charvona
"And Charvona, may he be remembered for good."
A palace servant who crops up a couple of times over the course of the book, most notably to tell Xerxes about Haman's gallows and thus give Xerxes the idea to hang Haman. Despite his minor presence in the story, Jewish tradition is to remember him for good.
- Bystander Syndrome: He doesn't do much of anything for the story, even though he's apparently present for notable parts of it. This gets averted at the end.
- Defector from Decadence: One interpretation of his character is that he becomes so disgusted with Haman's actions that he ultimately betrays him.
- The Elites Jump Ship: Another interpretation is that Charvona was part of Haman's faction but realized that the king was about to destroy them, so he publicly flipped and backstabbed Haman in order to avoid the king's wrath.
- Heel–Face Turn: Flipped on Haman and helped get the king to execute him.
- Small Role, Big Impact: He only has a couple lines in the story, but he's the one who induces the king to hang Haman, for which he's remembered.
- It has been noted that Xerxes acts capriciously throughout the story: he banishes Vashti but then immediately regrets it, he pledges to reward Mordecai but then puts it off for several years, and so on. This raises the possibility that, just as his mood rapidly changed with respect to Vashti and Mordecai, it might also have changed with respect to Haman; Xerxes was furious with Haman at the moment but may well have reconsidered later. Charvona's pushing the king to immediately execute Haman, therefore, prevented Haman from being saved by another of Xerses's mood swings and then remaining a threat to the Jews.
Zeresh
Haman's wife.
- Death of a Child: By the end of the story, her husband and all her sons have been killed.
- Evil Chancellor: Just like Haman himself was an evil chancellor to Xerxes, Zeresh served as an evil chancellor to Haman. It was her idea to erect the massive gallows for Mordecai which was ultimately used on Haman.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Her advice to her husband resulted in her husband's death, which saved the Jews.
