What does ester do with king in the Purim story?

Answer 1

Following King Ahasuerus' decision to end Vashti's status as his queen because she refused to dance (some say naked) in front of guests at a feast, he orders all the young women of his kingdom to be brought before him so that he can pick a replacement. One of them is Esther, a beautiful Jewish woman, who is the adoptive daughter of Mordecai, her cousin. However, the king does not know that Esther and Mordecai are Jewish.

Not long after, Mordecai stumbles across a plot, formulated by two palace courtiers named Bigthan and Teresh, to kill Ahasuerus - he informs the king of the plot and his dutiful service is recorded.

Later, Ahasuerus appoints Haman as his prime minister. Haman is rather full of himself once he gets this job and begins demanding that anyone further down the social scale than himself bow down before him. However, Jews will not bow down before anyone except for G-d and so Mordecai refuses. Angry at what he sees as disrespect and an insult, Haman forms a plan to put not just Mordecai to death but all the Jews in the kingdom too, and he gets Ahasuerus' permission to do it. He casts lots (the same as when the numbers are drawn in a modern lottery) to choose the right day to carry out the massacre, and 13 Adar (a date in the Hebrew calendar) is picked.

Mordecai finds out about Haman's plans and orders all the Jews to fast and carry out acts of penitence in the hope that they may be saved by Divine intervention. Esther also finds out what is going on and orders a further three days of fasting, then she organises a feast at which both Ahasuerus and Haman will be present. In the meatime, Haman has once again been insukted by Mordecai and builds a gallows from which he will be hanged. During the night before the feast, Ahasuerus is unable to sleep. The court records are read to him (presumably because he has an instinctive feeling that he's missing something, not because the court records were so boring they'd make him sleep) and he learns that Mordecai was responsible for preventing Bigthan and Teresh's plot but that he was never given a reward for this. Ahasuerus asks Haman what should be done for a man that a king wishes to honour and Haman, still suffering from an over-inflated ego since getting the prime minister job, assumes the king means himself so he says that a man receiving such honour should be dressed in royal finery and paraded around the city for all to see and admire. Haman is even more angry to find out that the king means to do this for Mordecai and not for him.

During the feast, Esther tells the king that both she and Mordecai - the woman whom he loves and the man who saved his life - are Jewish (though the Book of Esther doesn't go into lurid details, most people assume she used her feminine wiles to help make her case). In doing so, she persuades Ahasuerus that the Jews are worthy people to whom he owes thanks, and so the king orders that Haman be hanged on the gallows that were intended for Mordecai. To thank Esther for revealing the truth and in recognition of what the Jews have done for him, Ahasuerus allows Esther and Mordecai to write a legal decree awarding new rights to the Jews in the kingdom and, because Haman's decree that all Jews be killed cannot be abolished, they write one giving Jews the legal right to defend themselves from attack. On 13 Adar, when the massacre was going to start, 500 men including Haman's ten sons attack the Jews in the city of Sushan, but all the attackers are killed.

So, to cut a long story short, we honour Esther (and Mordecai) during Purim because it was she that convinced King Ahasuerus to end Haman's attempts to massacre Jews and gave them the right to prevent similar attempts in the future.