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Her penultimate child, born when she was thirty-nine, was Maria Antonia – later Marie Antoinette – who grew up impulsive and frivolous. The heir, Joseph, was fiercely intelligent but lacked empathy and tact – ‘My son was brought up from the cradle with the greatest tenderness and love, but it must be admitted that his desires and requests have been deferred to in many ways, flattering him and allowing him to develop a premature conception of his exalted station.’ He admired the philosophes, but his hero was his mother’s nemesis, Frederick. The empress worried about the future.

Little Mouse’s infidelities intensified her priggish piety: nude paintings were covered, and her Chastity Commission spied on love affairs, expelled saucy actresses and packed prostitutes into barges to be settled further down the Danube – earning her the mockery of enlightened Europe. Although she was suspicious of the philosophes, her reforms worked. ‘These are no longer the same Austrians,’ noted Frederick, who now complained of this ‘ambitious vindictive enemy, who was the more dangerous because she was a woman’. She had survived, yet Frederick kept Silesia. Voltaire hailed him as the Great, but he had a sneaking suspicion of warlords. ‘It’s forbidden to kill,’ wrote Voltaire. ‘Therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.’ Their meeting was disappointing. The two greatest men in Europe expected to be the master – and they clashed bitchily, each roiling the other. They were better apart – and the war was not over.

The Frederick of Asia, Nader, similarly could not rest on his laurels. He returned from Delhi as the most successful shah in a millennium. Yet success is never final. Brilliance is never far from madness.

WHAT’S A FATHER, WHAT’S A SON? THE MADNESS OF BIG DADDY

Now calling himself Shahanshah – king of kings and Lord of the Conjunction – Nader returned to find that his beloved eldest son Reza Qoli, a successful general whom he had left as viceroy, had conspired to take the throne if anything happened to Nader, murdering the ex-shah Tahmasp and his young sons. Reza’s wife, Tahmasp’s daughter, had committed suicide, while the prince griped, ‘My father wants to conquer even the ends of the earth and oppresses us all.’ Reza’s behaviour was recounted by Nader’s favourite, Taqi Khan, who entertained the shah during his drinking bouts. Nader loved him so much he even promised he would never execute him whatever he did. Yet there was a touchiness in their relationship. Nader was suspicious of Taqi, who in turn felt undervalued by Nader.

Reza arrived to greet his triumphant father with his own retinue of 12,000 musketeers. Nader was gripped by paranoia, favouring a younger son and his nephew Ali Qoli. He demoted Reza and gave the prettiest of the Mughal princesses to Ali Qoli. In 1741, as Nader was out riding, an assassin fired at him, and when Reza rode up to console him the shah accused him of complicity. He then found the assassin, who confessed all under torture. Nader threatened to take out Reza’s eyes.

‘Cut them out and shove them up your wife’s cunt,’ shouted Reza.

‘What’s a father,’ sobbed Nader when the boy’s eyes were brought to him, ‘what’s a son?’ Nader hugged Reza and howled.

‘You should know,’ Reza said finally. ‘By taking my eyes, you have blinded yourself and destroyed your own life.’

Nader campaigned against the Ottomans, but withdrew from Mosul, ailing and looking much older than his years, faced with a spate of rebellions.

In Shiraz, his intimate Taqi rebelled. Nader crushed Shiraz in a frenzy, building towers of heads. Having sworn never to execute his friend, he devised an ingenious torment in which he was not to be killed. Taqi was castrated, one eye torn out, the other left intact so he could watch as his sons and brothers were executed, before his beloved wives were gang-raped by soldiers. When the one-eyed, castrated Taqi was brought before Nader, he managed to crack a joke that saved his life, and he was sent to govern Kabul. But the tyrant was alienating many of his retainers. When he ordered the arrest of his nephew Ali Qoli, the prince started to plot.

In 1747, Nader summoned his children and favourite grandson Shahrokh (son of the blinded Reza and his Safavi wife), staring at them strangely for a long time then begging them to take the throne. All feared a trick. In June, fighting Kurdish rebels, Big Daddy camped at Fathabad, where, alone and paranoid, he suspected his Afshari bodyguards of plotting with Ali Qoli. So he ordered Durrani and his Afghans to execute his Iranian praetorians, but somehow the guards heard of the plan. Nader was sleeping with his favourite concubine, Chuki, when the assassins burst into the tent. Chuki awoke him; Nader jumped up but tripped as one of the guards swung his sword, lopping off his arm. As he begged for mercy, they beheaded him.