Katayun is the Caesar's daughter. She dreams of a man she has never seen, and when the court is paraded in front of her to pick from, she walks past all of it and points at a foreign guest with no money and no name. Her father disowns her on the spot.

The stranger is Goshtasp, who becomes king of Iran. She is Esfandiyar's mother, and the one person in that family who tells him, plainly, not to go east.