The Colour of Her Face Turned

The Shahnameh introduces her by an emotion rather than a deed. Sohrab has come up against Iran's border fortress and thrown the champion who rode out to meet him, and when word of it reaches the castellan's daughter inside, the poem says the shame of it turned her colour from tulip to pitch. That is her entrance. She is not summoned, not chosen, and not the garrison's last resort in any formal sense; the fortress still has men in it. What moves her is that the thing was done badly and everyone watched. The verse spends one couplet on her feelings and then she is arming.