Scheherezade

Scheherazade is a Persian queen and the storyteller of "One Thousand and One Nights).
It is a story told in a frames, stoies within stories, or mis en abyme, where every day Shahryar would marry a new virgin having found out that his first wife was betraying him. He had killed three thousand such women by the time he was introduced to Scheherazade.

Against her father's will, Scheherazade volunteered to spend one night with the King. Once in the King's chambers, Scheherazade asked if she might bid say goodbye to her sister who had secretly been prepared to ask Scheherazade to tell a story during the long night. The King lay awake and listened with awe to Scheherazade's first story and asked for another, but Scheherazade said there was not time as it was morning, but the next story was even more exciting.

And so the King kept Scheherazade alive as he eagerly anticipated each new story, until, one thousand and one adventurous nights, and three sons later, the King had not only been entertained but wisely educated in morality and kindness by Scheherazade who became his Queen.

Scheherazade was an extremely smart girl, who had read the books and memorized the stories, which come from an old Persian book called Hezar-afsana or the "Thousand Myths". The story 1001 Nights is about the power of stories, the way in which, like a Shakespeare play, much of the viscerality of the story comes from the story tellers themselves.