Esfandiyar is the crown prince who does everything right and is paid in promises. He is rooyin-tan, brazen-bodied: a blessing made his skin proof against any weapon, with one small exception that the poem tells you about early and that you then spend the whole story dreading.

His father Goshtasp keeps finding new reasons not to hand over the throne he owes him. The last of them is an errand: go east and bring Rostam back in chains. Esfandiyar knows exactly what he is being asked and why, and he goes. He has a road of seven stages of his own, and it is not this one.