The most famous queen of the Arshakuni kingdom of Great Hayek is Parandzem, the wife of Arshak II.
Parandzem is not only the most famous queen of the Arshakunyats kingdom of Great Armenia, but also one of the most prominent figures in our history:
She was from the Syunik ministerial family, one of the outstanding figures of the Armenian reality of the 4th century, Andok’s daughter/Antioch/Sunnahs: Miss Parandzem “became very famous for her beauty and decency”: He married the nephew of Arshak II, who bought Arshak, and created a family with him consisting of mutual love:
The exceptional beauty and charm of the Princess quickly changed the course of her life: According to the chroniclers, he falls in love with his cousin Tirith, who plots against the miserly: He manages to convince the king that the purchase is going to seize the throne of greater Armenia, which leads to the king ordering him to be killed:
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At that time, one of the Syunik ministers Andovka had a beautiful daughter named Parandzem, famous for her beauty and decency: Then Gnel the youth, the king’s nephew, took her as his wife. The beauty of this girl was proclaimed and widely spread and sounded in different places:Fueled by this reputation, Tirith, Gnel’s other cousin, fell in love with his bride…she then began to come up with tricks to lose this woman’s husband, hoping that she would be able to kidnap his wife later:
Tirith began to come up with insidious tricks. he hired a lot of assistants and employees with whom he could promote his malice: And lied to King Arshak about Ghenel, that Ghenel intended to reign and kill you…Therefore, the king, filled with anger towards Gnel, persecuted him and for a long time plotted against him…
Pavstos Buzand. “History of Armenians” / school D, ch. Э/
For Arshak II , Tirith ‘s arguments were extremely disturbing: Therefore, he invited Gnel to spend the Navasardian holidays together, but that’s when he carried out his conspiratorial murder.
According to Pavstos Buzand, Parandzem witnessed the conspiracy against her husband.A loving wife tried to save her husband by turning to the Catholicos for help:However, Arshak II did not stop even with the intervention of Nerses the Great:
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And Gnel came to Kuash town, at the foot of Aragats mountain, to his blind grandfather Tiran, who was still alive. The tyrant bitterly lamented his son Trdat, the father of Gnel, considering himself the cause of his murder.Therefore, he gives Gneli all his possessions and estates, villages and students, and orders him to live in the same Kuash settlement.Then Gnel takes a wife from a certain Syunyats tribe of Parandzem, and making him king, he gives abundant gifts to the ministers.․․
Here Tirith found an opportunity to anoint.He came to the king with his friend Vardan, who was the king’s squire from the Mamikonian family, and they say․”Don’t you know that Ghenel has made up his mind to kill you and reign in your place”…
Arshak, believing this, sends the same Vardan to Gnel…
Moses Khorenatsi. “The History of Armenia” (book 3, ch. IB
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When Gnel entered the army, the king was informed of his arrival.Then the court was ordered to keep him out of the army and take him to murder..
They arrived, caught the boy Ghenel, threw him off the horse, tied his hands behind his back and took him to the place of beheading.His wife was in the same company as her husband and had come with a horse.When she saw that her husband was seized and tied up, she immediately ran to the church, where a Divine ceremony was performed for the people of the army-morning prayer, where Bishop Nerses the great was also present: A woman, having come to the bishop, experienced the loss of her innocent husband: He nodded`saying: “Hurry up, help, a husband without sin, without crime is like”:(And he) interrupted the ceremony, ran to the king’s room and, having reached the door, entered the king: And the king, when he saw the great archbishop, knowing that he had come to intercede and convince Gnel not to be killed, pulled the samurai over his head, hurriedly covered his face, snoring as if he was asleep, as if he did not hear his words… And the young Gnel was taken to the king. near the hunting ground and beheaded on a hill of the mountain called Lsi…
Then an order was given from the king. all the people in the army, big and small, in general without exception, should go and mourn the killed Arshakun’s great sepoy Gnel. no one dare not go. And the king himself, walking among the weeping, sat down and mourned his nephew, whom he himself had killed. He was sitting next to the corpse, he was crying and told him to cry and mourn the dead: And the wife of the murdered man, tearing her clothes, straightening her hair, exposing her breasts, wept in mourning, wept loudly, wept with tears and tears…
Pavstos Buzand. “History of Armenians” (school D, chapter Ж)
According to the same historian, Tirith’s treachery became known at the funeral of Ghenel.And Parandzem, without hesitation, spoke about it to everyone. “The woman raised a complaint. “Listen all of you, my husband’s death was because of me, someone set his eyes on me and let my husband be killed because of me.” Her hair was flying, she was screaming while burning”…
According to historians, not long after Gnel’s death, Tirith was also executed by order of Arshak II, who was the victim of a conspiracy organized by Gnel. In the historiography of modern times, the point of view has appeared that the story of the Tirith conspiracy is rather a fiction, but in reality Arshak II killed two nephews who returned from the court of the Eastern Roman Empire, thereby getting rid of possible pretenders to the throne: There are many similar cases in world history when the king, suspecting his blood relatives of their claims to the throne, executed them by inventing exculpatory “arguments”.: Perhaps we are dealing with such a scenario: It is important to record the fact. King Arshak II killed his nephew Gnel, then married the widow Parandzem.
From the reports of the chroniclers, it becomes obvious that the ” proclaimed beauty and decency ” sissy was a strong-willed and very determined person.The “Queen of Great Armenia” and “Lady Dam” Parandzem continued to love her victimized husband, hating the tsar, whose wife she became, perhaps unwittingly. With surprise, but also with a human feeling of admiration, you read the lines of Pavstos Buzand written about this: “And as much as Arshak loved his wife, so she hated King Arshak”…
Parandzem’s strong-willed and consistent personality is also evident in another episode. She takes revenge for her murdered husband by urging Arshak II to execute his armor bearer Vardan Mamikonyan, who played an important role in organizing a conspiracy against Gnel.
The glorious queen gave Arshak II and the Armenian world a son, Prince Pap, who, thanks to her upbringing, became one of the most prominent figures in our history.
The best assessment of every woman, every mother, in the end, can be a characteristic of the child she brought up. And Queen Parandzem brought up a son whose goal, unlike the Arshakun kings who ruled before him, was not to take the supreme throne from the Persians from the Sassanians, for the sake of re-establishing the power of the Arshakun dynasty in Persia, but to strengthen the power of the Armenian world.
The Pap was crowned king at the age of only sixteen. He took unprecedented serious steps to rebuild the war-ravaged and weakened country: The young king implemented a number of reforms that very quickly led to an increase in the vital activity of the people, a sharp increase in the economic and military power of the country: And since they were committed by reducing the rights and possessions of the clergy and the church, they caused hostility of the clergy towards her: He was falsely accused of poisoning Catholicos Nerses the Great, of indecent behavior and morals, while he enjoyed great love and authority in the country, as evidenced by the Roman historian Ammianus Markelian.
The Pap became the founder of the independence of the Armenian Church.
Interestingly, the young king took a step that can be considered an attempt to correct the mistake of Trdat III the Great: Having preserved the status of Christianity as the state religion, he restored freedom of conscience in the country.:Everyone received freedom of religion. The followers of the Armenian pre-Christian faith have again erected statues of ancient Armenian gods. It was also supposed to further strengthen the hostility of the Armenian church to the young tsar.
The goal of the emphasized national policy of the King of Pap was to restore the former power of the Armenian kingdom, as well as its borders:The young king of Great Armenia, feeling strong enough, directly demanded from Emperor Vahes to cede all those territories that once belonged to the Armenian kingdom. They included the whole of Greater Armenia with the Armenian province of Mesopotamia (the center of which was the city of Urkha-Edessa), lesser Armenia, as well as Cappadocia…
This is what the Pap was like, the son of the Parrandzem Queen…
The the spiritual class to the Pap also found its certain expression in the presentation of the biography of the Parrandzem Queen.The stories that Parandzem made an alliance with demons, which accompanied his son Pap throughout his life, can be described as rumors invented by the motives of medieval obscurantism.Here are some episodes from those fictions. “When the mother gave birth to him, because she was a lawless person and had no fear of God at all, she gave him to demons, and many demons dwelt in the child and controlled him according to their will… And the mother looked and saw with her own eyes that white snakes were wrapped around the legs of the couch and they hugged the young Pope… And thus guided by the demons, the Pope son of Arshak indulged in such deeds throughout his life, until he reached the kingdom, until his death.”(Pavstos Buzand, “History of Armenia”, DPR. KHD).
Armenian chroniclers consider it a mortal sin of Parandzem to poison another lady of Arshak II–Olympia:The latter, the fiance of Rome’s deceased brother), with whom Armenian-Roman relations were strengthened.If we keep in mind that our chroniclers were also representatives of the spiritual class, it can be assumed that a biased approach was shown here as well.It was presented in such a way that the queen Parandzem poisoned Olympia with the elder ant of the royal palace (during communion), to whom she presented her native village in exchange for service: