Xerxes and Herodotus

Esther is a fictional drama that gives voice to a real issue. It's possible that this is sort of a Jewish sense of what we are different and therefore we wonder whether everyone else hates us because we're different, even if that hatred is not really there all the time. Other than the story itself, the book is very realistic. Esther is actually entirely believable in the sense that nothing miraculous happens with it.