Esther stood silently before her vanity, regarding herself critically in the gilded mirror. She knew that at 58, her once-legendary beauty had faded, and sometimes she still couldn’t believe that the graying, tired visage with the deepening lines belonged to her. “It’s no wonder they’ve forgotten me,” she thought sadly. “Who would want to look at this old face?” The people, her subjects, seemed to only have eyes for her son the Prince, whose broad shoulders and romantic exploits filled the weeklies and the airwaves, whose escort-of-the-week was always the woman of the moment. Esther was known only as the mother of the Prince. Even the Jewish community only remembered her once a year, on the anniversary of the death of Haman. Every year she had to fly to another Jewish community that had decided to glorify itself by dedicating some new activity hall or parking lot to to the acts of bravery of the 18-y18-year old Esther, so many years ago.