There was once a prince of a wealthy kingdom named Aristandros. He was married to as many wives as he wanted and he really did want them... By the time he was eighteen he had inherited the kingdom. For a long time he lived in a world of pure pleasure, with women, wine, and worldly goods to his heart's content.
That all changed when he became 35. His oldest son, Philippos, was a mean-spirited youngster who didn't look particularly like his father. With the help of the court eunuchs and the king's twenty-nine other sons, Philippos seized the throne and expelled Aristandros. The former king was laughed at by all his wives and courtiers, who revealed they had been cheating on him and mocking him secretly. Even his legitimate sons hated him.
Aristandros fled, a changed man. Soon he reached the barbarian country of Hyrcania, whose inhabitants were fierce wolves and fierce men. He killed the chief of Hyrcania and raped his daughter, then escaped to the woods, where he lived for nine months with no human contact. He returned to the chief's court only long enough to take his newborn son from its mother before disappearing again.
Eighteen years later, an old man and an adolescent lad came to the kingdom of Philippos. The king was so impressed by the strapping young man, Alexandros, that he offered him a place in his royal guard and lodging for his aged father. The boy accepted, and started his service immediately.
Soon, members of the royal family started turning up dead. The kingdom was sent into a new state of fear with each death, and despite all the precautions, the murders did not stop or even slow down. Royal brothers of the king found themselves stabbed, drowned, burnt, thrown off battlements, trampled by horses, poisoned, strangled, and even eaten by strange animals not native to the kingdom. At last only Philippos was left. He barricaded himself in his palace, alone but for vast stores of food and water and a single guard: his most loyal companion, Alexandros. Three days later, on the anniversary of Aristandros' expulsion, Philippos was found dead, hanging from the tower of his castle.
Alexandros strode to the palace square and revealed his parentage to the assembled crowd. Aristandros joined him, and many of the courtiers old enough to remember the events of eighteen years hence fainted at the very sight. All of Aristandros' former wives were bound and given to the Hyrcanians as slaves in payment of the blood price he had accrued in killing their chief.
The kingdom was plunged into a new era of glory with Aristandros at its head, and soon Alexandros succeeded him. No more was the kingdom bound to indolence and vice; the palaces were torn down, drinking was forbidden, and adultery became punishable by death. Before long a messenger came from the East. He spoke of a new king in a far land called Arabia, who brought the truth of Allah down from the heavens. King Alexandros heard his words and was convinced, accepting this new set of laws for mankind and becoming one of the first Muslims. He took the regnal name of al-Iskander and founded the Iskanderid dynasty, which would in its time grow to dominate Greece and the whole middle east.