As has been asserted by some scholars, the major theme of the Shāhnāmah is the struggle for the possession of the farr (royal glory). Shīrīn, the widow of Khusrau Parvīz, proclaimed in front of the new shah, her stepson Shīrūyah, that she was “the head of the ladies (sar-i bānuvān) and the glory of the king (farr-i shāh).” She also boasted about her virtues when her stepson harshly accused her of witchcraft. In her speech before the chosen nobles of Iran, she tried to rebut, as Helen had once done in front of all the Trojans, accusations against her honor and showed her illustrious beauty to the Iranian nobles who once so strongly opposed her marriage to Khusrau. First, she recounted all virtues a married woman may have:

When the great Kayanian king of mythical times, Kay Khusrau, reminisced at the end of his reign about the ideal women of the past, he evoked the memory of four women, namely, the two sisters of Jamshīd: Māhāfarīd, the daughter of Tūr, and his own mother, Farangīs, the daughter of Afrāsiyāb. Shahrnāz and Arnavāz, the sisters of Jamshī, were forced after the fall of their brother to marry the tyrant Zahhāk who corrupted them through his evil magic.