Did Esther appear nude before the king?

Answer 1

"... the maiden pleased him ..." could be understood to convey to the reader that Esther stood out in such contrast to the steady procession of previous maidens who had been processed, primped and prepared to come before him, that her foreign (non-Persian) features, natural attractiveness, unsophisticated girl-next-door charm and carriage appealed immediately to Xerxes' individual preference, that the eye of the beholder noticed an intense, serious case of beauty, and that he was instantly overcome by desire, and by his own fantasy of what was surely to come.

It could certainly go either way. Even if one ignores the fact that many people enjoy clothed sex.

Answer 2

Leonard J. Greenspoon (The Oxford History of the Biblical World, Between Alexandria and Antioch) describes the Book of Esther as a second-century Jewish novel, so any answer about characters or events in the story must come from the book itself. Esther 2:9 coyly tells us that "the maiden pleased him," which would have been intended to convey to the reader that Xerxes and Esther had sex the day she was brought to him. The readers would not have been in doubt that Esther was nude.

Answer 3

At those times that they had sexual intercourse, the answer is yes. At other times, the answer is no. They had intercourse only at night (Talmud, Megillah 13a). However, before he met Esther, the king at one point had demanded in his drunkenness that the previous queen, Vashti, appear nude in public. It was her refusal that led him to get rid of her (Talmud, ibid., 12b).

See also:

More about Esther

The reliability of the Hebrew Bible