In real life, snakes are… honestly fine. Lil slithery, kinda hard to read,
but broadly inoffensive. But there’s something about ‘em that just tickles the imagination,
you know? You can’t walk five feet these days without tripping over a mythological
snake with crazy anomalous properties. Maybe they’re the feathery forefather of humanity,
or a many-colored harbinger of rain, or an eldritch abomination aiming to devour the sun,
or any number of other slithery bois wending their coils through human mythohistory. Something about
their sleek design just speaks to us, you know? But while mythical snakes span the whole moral
spectrum, if there’s one title that just screams “evil” it’s “serpent king.” Nobody
good has ever held the title serpent king, and if you want proof, let’s go back about a
thousand years to the opening chapter of the famous Persian epic The Shahnameh. Written
by the poet Ferdowsi between 977 and 1010 CE, the Shahnameh, literally “the epic of kings,”
is the national epic of Greater Iran and a very, very important piece of literature.
It’s also long as balls, but conveniently subdivides into a lot of smaller stories
for easier consumption. Here’s one of them! So the story begins with a quick rundown on
some ancient mythical kings and all the cool stuff they did, mostly important civilization-things
like inventing clothes and fire and irrigation - you know, basic stuff like that. This line
of kings does pretty well for itself until it produces Jamshid (جمشید), who does really well
for himself - so well, in fact, that he decides he’s basically god and starts having people
worship him. This is generally considered to be unwise, and has some unintended consequences.
See, in Zoroastrianism, to put it very simply, the earth is basically a constant battleground between
the forces of good and evil. Specifically, it’s a proxy war between the beings Ahura Mazda, creator
deity and ultimate good guy, and Angra Mainyu, later called Ahriman, the source of all evil and
creator of various evil spirits called Daevas - not to be confused with the Devas in Hinduism,
very different concept. In this model it’s the duty of humanity to do good and bring happiness
because it bolsters the forces of good and helps in the cosmic battle against Ahriman. In contrast,
doing bad stuff tips the scales the other way, and empowers Ahriman to do more bad stuff. Now by the
time the Shahnameh was written at the turn of the 11th century, the dominant religion in Persia was
Islam, which had locally overtaken Zoroastrianism a few centuries earlier. So the poet Ferdowsi
was writing from an interesting position: the ancestral Iranian religion of Zoroastrianism
was no longer widely practiced and some of that culture was in danger of being erased. So similar
to how the Prose Edda frames the Norse gods as something old and distant, the Shahnameh is framed
mythologically while still actively preserving these ancient and culturally significant stories.
But anyway, long story short, Jamshid does a big no-no and in the process tips the local cosmic
balance towards evil. Ahriman gets a nice little power boost and starts sniffin’ around to cause
some mischief. So he zips out into the desert to the kingdom of Thasis, ruled by the wise
and just king Mirtas. Now Mirtas has a beloved son, Zahak (ضحّاک), and Ahriman rolls up to the
palace disguised as a nobleman and tells Zahak he should enter a covenant with him, and if he does,
he’ll raise his head above the sun. Now Zahak is a nice boy, maybe a little bit gullible,
so he thinks, willickers, mister, that sounds pretty nifty! and agrees! Step one? Kill your
dad. Zahak doesn’t really wanna do that, but, eh, a deal’s a deal, so he and Ahriman set a trap for
Mirtas and kill him. Now Zahak is the king of Thasis! Nice! Ahriman teaches him some nifty
magic and encourages him to be evil, but Zahak’s not all bad. He’s not a great king, but, you know,
he’s trying his best. So Ahriman changes tactics and zips round the back to change out his groucho
glasses and enters the palace in a different disguise - this time a young man who offers to
be a cook. Zahak doesn’t see the harm in it and agrees, and Ahriman wastes no time in whipping up
a meal fit for a king - specifically, he changes the formerly vegetarian menu to include meat,
and Zahak is so impressed by this dietary shift that he has the cook summoned before him so he
can grant him a boon, and Ahriman asks only that he be allowed to kiss the king’s shoulders. Well,
we don’t kinkshame in this palace! Zahak agrees, and he probably shouldn’t have,
because after the deed is done, Ahriman is swallowed up by the earth and two venomous
snakes sprout from Zahak’s shoulders. Fun times! Well Zahak obviously wants these snakeshoulders
out of his life, but they can’t find any way to get rid of them. Enter Ahriman Version Three,
this time disguised as a learned scholar, who tells Zahak that the only way to tame
a case of the ol’ snakeshoulders is to feed those bad boys human brains.
Now obviously having a king with snakeshoulders who eats human brains is not so good for the
kingdom. Word begins to spread about this absolutely terrifying snake king,
which is actually good news for the people back in Persia who’ve been dealing with their own evil
king for a good few centuries now. Rebel forces congregate in Thasis and declare Zahak the new
Shah, and an army musters to march against Jamshid, who sees the writing on the wall
and books it. He manages to evade capture for a good hundred years or so before they eventually
catch him and saw him in half. Tough break, buddy. So now Zahak the Serpent-King, or as I’ve taken
to calling him, Johnny Snakeshoulders, is the Shah of Persia, which is great if the goal is
making the world an exponentially sh*ttier place to live. Eventually things get so bad that Ahura
Mazda sits up and takes notice, and sets a plan in motion to get things back on track. Jamshid’s got
a few surviving descendants rattling around, and thanks to a little divine intervention,
one of them has a son named Feridoun. Not so coincidentally, that night Zahak has a terrible
nightmare where a young man kills him with a mace shaped like a cow head. He wakes up and
demands an explanation from his advisers, who reluctantly inform him that it sounds
like there’s a prophecy that he’s going to be overthrown and destroyed by a man named Feridoun.
Well, you know how these evil king types get about prophecies. Zahak immediately starts
scouring the land for Feridoun. Feridoun’s mother catches wind of this and hides him in a forest,
where he’s raised by a magic cow called Purmaieh. Unfortunately after a few years the forest isn’t
safe anymore, so she comes back to collect him him and heads off to an isolated mountain peak
where a hermit can take care of him instead - and just in time, too, since Zahak finds the forest,
learns that Feridoun is gone, and gets so angry that he kills Purmaieh and everything else in
the forest, turning it into a barren desert. Zahak continues to strengthen his army and
search for Feridoun, but that doesn’t do his confidence any favors, and he starts to
worry he might be a bad king. Nooooo. Whaaaat? Nooooo. SO naturally he demands his citizens
reassure him that he’s actually a good king doing a really good job. Obviously they do
what he says, because snakeshoulders, but dissent is beginning to spread.
This comes to a head one day when a blacksmith named Kavah marches straight into the palace and
demands an audience. Kavah’s had seventeen sons, see, but sixteen of them have been sacrificed to
the king’s snakeshoulder situation, and now his last son has been chosen to die too. He demands
that Zahak spare his last son, and Zahak actually agrees! Then he asks Kavah if he'll sign this
official paperwork stating that Zahak is a good king actually, to which Kavah responds by ripping
the paperwork into confetti and striding out of the palace while everyone is too stunned to stop
him. He heads straight for the city square, tears off his blacksmith apron, uses it as a banner to
rally the people in rebellion and leads an army out of the city to go find the prophecied hero
who’ll deliver them from the serpent king. Give me this movie, hollywood! You cowards!
Meanwhile, Feridoun has grown into a responsible and wise young man, returned home to his mother
and learned of his royal lineage and his destiny to destroy the Serpent King.
He’s ready to fulfill his destiny and is, frankly, getting kind of impatient waiting,
cuz he wants to kill the evil king now but his mom says it’s not safe to go alone so he’s gonna have
to wait. This is around the time the massive army of rebels rolls up on their front lawn to ask if
Feridoun can come out and play. Now that they’ve got the manpower and the prophecy on their side,
Feridoun gears up in some kingly armor and has the rebels forge him a mace - and in
honor of his old nursemaid, the business end of the mace is shaped like a cow head.
Oh yeah. It's all coming together. So they march to the city,
finding it… actually mostly undefended, since coincidentally Zahak is out with
his army looking for Feridoun. The people rally behind them and they invade the palace, defeating
the daevas Zahak left to guard the place and setting Feridoun on the throne as the new Shah.
Now Zahak is none too pleased about this when he returns. He and his army besiege the city
and there’s a very dramatic battle - which our heroes win! Feridoun whacks Zahak with
his mace and is just about to kill him when he’s stopped by Sraosha, a servant of Ahura Mazda,
who tells him to imprison Zahak on Mount Damavand instead. Feridoun follows his
advice and binds Zahak under the mountain for all time. And so thanks to a prophecied true king,
a charismatic rebel leader and a battle scene so ridiculous I literally can’t believe they haven’t
made this trope goldmine a movie yet, so ends the tumultuous tale of Johnny Snakeshoulders!
[You're Gonna Go Far, Kid - The Offspring]