Okay so I was re-reading the story of Ester from the Bible, and I noticed something.
Not to step on anybody's religious toes, but I found that as a trans woman, I could see a trans story in there.
I mean, she's living quietly, then gets pushed into a place where she can express her feminine nature - clothes, makeup, beauty treatments, and so on, but there is a catch - she has a secret that if found out could even end her life.
Eventually, though, she must reveal the secret to save her people, regardless of the risk.
I don't know, its probably just me being me ...
Comments
Significant homophone
An ester is a chemical compound derived from an acid.
Esther’s a character in the Christian Bible (and Hebrew Bible, presumably, since she’s Old Testament). Her concealment was ethnic/religious, not one of gender identity. Like all Old Testament tales, it basically comes with a side-order of vile misogyny: I wouldn’t rate her freedom to express her feminine nature, myself.
At one time, I was thinking about writing something ‘TG’ that’s Bible-inspired, myself: some of the folks in my writing group already heard my pitch for ‘Jess Christ’.
So many ideas, though... and only a finite amount of time.
Sugar and Spiiice – TG Fiction by Bryony Marsh
Purim
Since Purim is based on the book of Esther, it's definitely part of Judaism. It's not so important in Christianity, which is why we don't have a Christian Purim.
Maybe a story
For such a time as this?
Love, Andrea Lena
Interesting Take...
People can and have made what they choose to from Esther's story, since there's no historical basis for any of it.
The best guess now seems to be that a spring-equinox festival was being co-opted that celebrated Persian pantheon heads Marduk and Ishtar taking over for the previous culture's Hamman and Vashti. (King Ahasueras was real: the Greeks called him Xerxes, and he had a powerful and influential wife named Amestris -- rulers were polygamous back then, but her son was the crown prince -- who seems likely to have been the product of another culture. Modern commentators can only guess whether her name inspired any of this.) Early Christians apparently did the same with Easter, a pagan festival that used another variation on the name.
Modern sentiment has turned Vashti -- who spent most of the past two millennia as a villainess -- into a heroine who gives up her throne and possibly her life by refusing to dance naked at a feast Ahasueras was holding for some VIPs. That's what opens up the position for Esther.
(None of this has much to do with your post. I just enjoy bringing it up whenever someone mentions the biblical Esther.)
Anyway, yours is certainly an interesting take on the story. Can't see any conceptual contradictions there from what the Bible tells us. (Doesn't mean there aren't any: though it's traditional to read the story at Purim celebrations -- which aren't too different from Halloween parties, costumes and all -- I'm not a party guy and don't believe I've been to one unless one counts Sunday school get-togethers decades ago. Most interesting thing I recall about the reading is that it's from a megillah, a scroll without a take-up reel. The host may spend the rest of the party trying to roll it back up,)
Your synopsis reminded me that despite Esther's Jewishness being crucial to the story, the writer treats it as a given (though concealable) as you did with TG here. Religious devotion isn't what this is all about. A later author was upset about that -- God rather famously isn't mentioned at all -- and wrote The Rest of Esther, making the MC a more devout person, offering prayers, fasting and doing the sackcloth-and-ashes routine before challenging the king to save the Jews. It's considered canonical by Catholics but apocryphal by others; it's not part of the Jewish Tanakh, the Greek Septuagint or the documents translated into the King James and other European Protestant texts.
(Exotic, beautiful, much younger than the ruler who claims her...I wonder if anyone has cast Melania Trump as Queen Esther.)
Eric