Cassandane, queen consort of King Cyrus the Great and daughter of the Achaemenid noble Pharnaspes, stands at the heart of Iran’s first empire as the matriarch whose lineage made conquest endure: mother to Cambyses II and Bardiya (Smerdis) and, through her daughter Atossa—later wife of Darius the Great—grand ancestress to the royal line that carried Persian sovereignty into the reigns of Xerxes and beyond. Contemporary and later sources remember the solemn mourning decreed across the empire at her death, a testament to a queen esteemed not only for blood but for bearing—an ideal of Persian dignity that matched Cyrus’s justice with regal poise. In the House of Achaemenes she embodies continuity: a bridge between founding and flourishing, the quiet authority behind the throne whose legacy threads dynastic order through triumph and turmoil alike—fittingly the Queen of Hearts, for she is the empire’s living bond.