The Impostor King

In 522 BCE, someone claiming to be Bardiya, the brother of King Cambyses II, seized the Persian throne. According to the official account, the real Bardiya had been secretly murdered years earlier on his brother's orders.

The impostor — perhaps a Median priest named Gaumata — ruled for seven months before a group of Persian nobles led by Darius stormed the palace and killed him. Or at least, that is what Darius told the world. The truth may be far more complicated.

Modern historians suspect Darius may have killed the real Bardiya and then invented the impostor story to justify seizing the throne. Power writes its own history.