Kay Khusraw is the model of the righteous sacral king in the Iranian tradition shared by the Tajiks, and the son of the martyred prince Siyovush. Born in Turan to the princess Farangis and smuggled back to Iran, he grows to avenge his father by overthrowing Afrasiyab, and reigns as the very embodiment of justice, endowed with the farr, the divine glory of kingship. At the summit of his power, weary of the world, he sets his affairs in order and rides into the mountains with his companions, where he vanishes into snow and is seen no more, a departure that later Zoroastrian tradition reworks into his awaited return at the end of time. He continues the Avestan hero Kavi Haosravah, binding the living Tajik epic imagination to the deepest layer of the Iranian past.