#about why manuchurh is relevant enough later on

[tired-reader-writer]

Reading the Shahnameh out of curiosity and for AU inspiration purposes and...

(some of these are definitely gonna be out of order since my stuff got jumbled up while transferring phones my bad)

Souroush?!

Ormuzd is Ahura Mazda, by the way. The creator deity and... sole? main? deity of Zoroastrianism, if I remember correctly. Arslan Senki seems to have made the Parsian faith polytheistic, with a whole pantheon, but Zoroastrianism was a monotheistic religion, wasn't it? But then again there seemed to be deities/semi-deities like Anita? I really need to read more about the entire thing.

Kaweh has balls of steel! And later in the tale it is mentioned that Kaweh's apron/banner has become part of Feridoun's signatures, or at least that of his army, and Kaweh's son later comes to serve under Feridoun's son and grandson as well. That's really really cool. A much better fate than what Iumaka received, in any case. Iumaka too was a blacksmith— they even crafted the chains that'd bind Zahhak, and the treasured sword Rukhnabad as well. They and Kaykhusraw (the approximate Feridoun equivalent even if Kaykhusraw's actual namesake comes up way later, and I haven't gotten that far) even had a child together, but both Iumaka and Araya the younger met untimely ends, at Kaykhusraw's own hands/command.

(This takes place before the entire Feridoun thing, by the way. Feridoun is his grandson, according to this translation)

Note to self: do look up where Cathay is. When I was reading ArSen I always wondered whether Jamshid got tossed into the Darband Inland Sea or the actual Sea sea in the south, lol.

Just pinging any mention of Alborz that catches my eye. Very relevant to my interests that both instances here involve a child being fostered by someone who lives there: the hermit and Simurgh. How the mountains are regarded as a safe haven for these two children (Feridoun and the boy who would later be named Zal). (Also Zal was born with silvery white hair and that's why he was abandoned by his father Saum.)

Feridoun had three sons, Kaykhusraw has two in canon and three in my AU. What a coincidence! Though I guess the difference is that the eldest dies instead of the youngest, a boy who didn't live long enough to even meet his half-brothers.

I feel so bad for Irij! His brothers were out for blood and he just wanted peace :( At least his kid lived and avenged him. Minuchihr, whom I'm guessing was Manuchurh's namesake?

HUH. So there were Zahhak's descendants still exist, and they were even allowed to rule! I wasn't expecting that (nor for Zahhak to even have descendants— I guess ArSen's Zahhak influenced my impression of the character a lot)