Chapter 29
I was paralyzed by a sense of inevitability.
Stateira seemed to have had a similar intuition, for when we were reunited at Susa—in preparation for the mass wedding of some ninety of my officers and their Persian betrotheds—she voiced her misgivings about our own forthcoming wedding, then finished by saying: “As you have taken another to wife, I now release you from the promise you made to me.”
I was stunned, and hurt.
“Do you love me so little that you can relinquish me so easily?”
“It is because I love you that I can relinquish you, knowing that it is for your happiness, since it is really no more possible to have two wives than it is to have two queens, or two countries.”
I left off the notion that her own father had had many women—not to mention boys—and said instead, “
